Full Text of Foreign Minister Wang Yi's Speech on China's Diplomacy in 2014(4)

Solidarity and cooperation among BRICS countries have been deepened. President Xi Jinping paid state visits to India and Brazil, and hosted the visit to China by South Africa's president. China and India agreed to make their strategic and cooperative partnership more development-focused, and breakthroughs were made in China-India pragmatic cooperation. China and Brazil decided to enhance their comprehensive strategic partnership and explored the feasibility of building a railway running across South America from the Pacific Coast to the Atlantic Coast.

With respect to Africa, following President Xi Jinping's first African tour last year when he proposed the four-point principle of sincerity, real results, affinity and good faith for China's relations with Africa, Premier Li Keqiang visited Africa this year and raised such important initiatives as seven major cooperation projects and three major transport networks amid fresh progress in bilateral cooperation concerning railway, mining and agriculture projects which further enriched the new type of strategic partnership between the two sides.

With respect to Latin America, President Xi Jinping met with leaders of Latin American and Caribbean countries for the first time in the history of China-Latin America relations. The two sides declared the launching of a comprehensive cooperative partnership of equality, mutual benefit and common development and created the China-CELAC Forum as a new platform for elevating relations between the two sides, thus extending China's collective cooperation mechanism to include all developing countries.

With respect to the Middle East, we have elevated our relations with Egypt and Algeria to the level of comprehensive strategic partnership, hosted the sixth Ministerial Conference of the China-Arab Cooperation Forum and put forth initiatives for China-Arab joint efforts to build the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road and create a new "1+2+3" cooperation pattern, which were responded favorably in Arab countries.

With respect to the South Pacific, President Xi Jinping visited Australia and New Zealand and upgraded China-Australia and China-New Zealand relations to the level of comprehensive strategic partnership. He established strategic partnerships of mutual respect and common development with Pacific island countries and advanced China's overall cooperation with the South Pacific island countries having diplomatic ties with China.

Taking the past two years as a whole, China's diplomacy, facing a new situation and new demands, has got off to a fruitful start, with its agenda unfolding across the board and its global network of partnerships basically taking shape.

Third, we have made our own contribution to common development in the world. As the world's second largest economy, China is fully aware of its responsibility and has done its utmost to promote development and prosperity of the world.8 By maintaining economic stability at home, we have helped global economy, Asian economy, in particular, to effectively resist the downward pressure. As the world's fastest growing economy, China has made itself an opportunity to world development. The recent Central Economic Work Conference sent out a message that the Chinese economy has come to a new normal, reaffirming China's direction for a new round of high-quality opening-up. On the home front, we will pursue a path of sustainable development, maintaining a healthy and steady growth of a medium-high speed, upgrading our economic structure toward the medium-high end and bringing about sustained benefits to our people. On the external front, we will deepen our opening strategy of mutual benefit, achieving the transformation from being the world's workshop of consumer items to being a key supply base of manufacturing equipment and realizing the common prosperity of China and the rest of the world.

By promoting the development of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, we have injected a strong impetus to the common development in Eurasia. The economic belt and the maritime Silk Road are projects designed to boost win-win cooperation between China on the one hand and Eurasian countries on the other in the spirit of mutual learning and harmonious coexistence reminiscent of the ancient Silk Road and serve as an overarching architecture for China's external cooperation endeavor in the new era.

Internally, this initiative dovetails with China's development strategy of developing our central and western regions while addressing regional imbalances and fits well with our "go global" strategy aimed at building all-directional cooperation with the outside world.

Internationally, this initiative aims to secure common development and shared prosperity in all countries along the routes, as it upholds the vision for a community of shared destiny and highlights a win-win approach featuring consultation, joint development and sharing. The initiative is bound to bring new life and vigor to the ancient land of Eurasia and give this vast continent two strong wings on its journey toward prosperity.