Page 4 - ON BUILDING A HUMAN COMMUNITY WITH A SHARED FUTURE

THE 21ST-CENTURY MARITIME SILK ROAD

think tanks, parliaments, NGOs, and social groups, to generate further
intellectual support for the growth of China-ASEAN relations and to
increase mutual understanding and friendship between our peoples.
China is open to sending more volunteers to the ASEAN countries
to support development in fields like culture, education, health, and
medicine. China proposes designating 2014 as a China-ASEAN Year of
Cultural Exchange. In the coming three to five years China will offer the
ASEAN countries 15,000 government scholarships.
Fifth, we need commitment to being open and inclusive. An ocean
is vast because it welcomes all rivers. Over the long course of human
history, the people of China and the ASEAN countries have created
great civilizations, rich and diverse and known the world over. Ours is a
region of enormous diversity where different civilizations have, through
the influence we have on each other, blended and evolved in a process
that provides important cultural foundations for the people of China and
the ASEAN countries to learn from, draw on, and gain from each other’s
experiences.
We should learn enthusiastically from the development experiences
of other regions, and welcome countries from outside the region to play
a constructive role in promoting our region’s development and stability.
At the same time, countries from outside the region should respect our
region’s diversity and be sure that what they’re doing is in the interests of
the region’s development and stability. The China-ASEAN community
with a shared future is bound together with the ASEAN community and
the East Asian community; we should each give full rein to our respective
strengths to realize harmony in diversity and common progress through
inclusiveness, to benefit the people of our region and the people of
other countries.
An increasingly cohesive China-ASEAN community with a shared
future is consistent with the trend of our time for the pursuit of peace,
development, cooperation, and shared benefits, and is consistent with the
common interests of the people of Asia and the rest of the world. Its
space for development is vast and its potential for growth mighty.

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