Page 2 - ON BUILDING A HUMAN COMMUNITY WITH A SHARED FUTURE

ON BUILDING A HUMAN COMMUNITY WITH A SHARED FUTURE

development in recent decades. Millions of ordinary Chinese families
have transformed their lives through hard work. When added up, these
small changes constitute a tremendous force driving China’s development
and progress, bearing testament to what has been achieved so far in
China’s great course of reform and opening up.
This is a course of exploring the unknown. The history of mankind
offers no precedent for us to follow in modernizing this huge country
of more than 1.3 billion people. China must necessarily pursue a path
of development all its own. As a Chinese saying puts it, we have been
“crossing the river by feeling for the stones.” By continuously deepening
reform and opening up, exploring new ground and forging ahead,
we have established and further developed socialism with Chinese
characteristics.
This is a course of delivering concrete outcomes. We have
persistently pursued economic development as our top priority, never
slackening our efforts. We have moved with the times and taken bold
initiatives. Thanks to our courage, resolve, and dedication, and a
determination to keep on hammering away, we have succeeded in turning
China into the world’s second largest economy, the largest trader of
goods, and the third largest direct overseas investor, and lifted its per
capita GDP to almost US$8,000.
This is a course of achieving common prosperity. Development
is for the people, it relies on the people, and its outcomes are shared
by the people. This is what China’s reform, opening up, and socialist
modernization are all about. Since reform and opening up began, over
700 million Chinese people have lifted themselves out of poverty, and life
has significantly improved for all of China’s 1.3 billion-plus population.
In pursuing development, we have accomplished in just a few decades
what it has taken other countries several hundred years to achieve.
This is a course of China and the world coming closer together.
China has pursued an independent foreign policy of peace and a basic
state policy of opening up. We have endeavored to develop in an open
environment, starting first with the introduction of large-scale overseas
investment, before taking major strides to go global. We are actively
involved in building a more just and equitable international order. China
continues to increase its interaction with the outside world, and we are

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