What Li told British think tanks

Premier Li Keqiang and British Prime Minister David Cameron meet the media on Tuesday after holding a meeting. Pang Xinglei / Xinhua

According to a line from a Chinese poem: "A mountain when viewed at its face looks like a range, but when viewed from the side looks like a peak". That is to say, a big mountain may leave you with different impressions when viewed from different angles. So today, I'd like to provide you with a full picture of China to help you better understand China.  [Special coverage]

Our ancestors taught us that we should not do unto others which we do not want others to do unto us. We regard this as an unwritten rule, as this has been imprinted into the DNA of the nation and it becomes an accepted code of conduct for the Chinese people. Expansion is not in the Chinese DNA. Nor can we accept the logic that a strong country is bound to be hegemonic.

War means the failure of human wisdom. Peace is the result of reflecting on disasters and sufferings. Yesterday I was at Downing 10, and I saw on the wall two portraits of Prime Minister Winston Churchill. He once said: "In history lies all the secrets of statecraft. Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it."

The British use English as their mother tongue, while in China today 300 million Chinese are learning English, perhaps more than any other country in the world. China is where tea was first discovered — the British people, it is said, on average drink more tea than most people in the world.

I'm not playing a game of figures, I just want to drive home my message, which is, China will continue to reduce poverty and continue to look for a balance in development, sound and sustainable development. This will provide huge opportunities for the world.