By Meng Xiangfu, Zhao Bing, People’s Daily
A compilation of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s speeches marking the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was recently published by the Foreign Languages Press in both Chinese and English, and distributed at home and abroad.
The book collects three speeches of Xi, namely the speeches at a grand rally and a reception to celebrate the 70th founding anniversary of the PRC, and the speech at a presentation ceremony of the national medals and honorary titles of the PRC.
“In his speeches, President Xi expounded China’s ‘marvel-of-the-world’ development achievements made under the strong leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC),” said Song Shiming, professor with the Party School of the Central Committee of CPC (China National School of Administration).
“On the one hand, China is eliminating absolute poverty, and the ultimate reason for such achievement is that China’s state power belongs to the people; on the other hand, China has greatly improved its comprehensive national strength, like what President Xi has put forward: no force can ever shake the status of China, or stop the Chinese people and nation from marching forward.
Reviewing history is for expecting a better future, while summarizing past achievements is for accumulating power to march forward. Xin Ming, professor with the Party School of the Central Committee of CPC believes that Xi’s speeches offer fundamental rules for China to consolidate and further its development achievements as his remarks are a multi-level and multi-perspective summary of China’s successful experiences.
“All of the three speeches have one focus – how to make the great China greater. Standing at a newer and higher starting point as China celebrates the 70th anniversary of its founding, we need to summarize experiences and keep moving forward toward the two centenary goals,” Xin said.
The reasons for China’s historic achievements and transformation in the past 70 years lie in the Party leadership and its adherence to the socialist path.
After the founding of the PRC, the CPC united the people and led them in completing socialist revolution, establishing socialism as China’s basic system, and advancing socialist construction, said Luo Pinghan, professor with the Party School of the Central Committee of CPC.
This completed the broadest and most profound social transformation in the history of the Chinese nation and created the fundamental political conditions and the institutional foundation for achieving all development and progress in China today, Luo noted, thus was made a great transition: The Chinese nation reversed its fate from the continuous decline in modern times to steady progress toward prosperity and strength.
“Peace” is a high-frequency word in Xi’s three speeches. Song believes that China, having always safeguarded world peace, will unswervingly follow the path of peaceful development. China’s development was achieved in a peaceful environment, and has in return greatly strengthened the peace-loving power across the world, Song remarked.
People are China’s solid foundation and its main source of confidence to govern. Xi’s request to ensure that the people maintain their principal position in the country reflected the people-oriented governance philosophy.
“Since the 18th CPC National Congress, the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core has focused on people’s livelihood and steadfastly promoted poverty alleviation. Such efforts to eradicate the root causes for poverty are the best example of the people-oriented philosophy,” Luo said.
China has never been so close to the center of the world stage with increasingly improving international influence. It is participating in, contributing to and leading the promotion of world peace.
Peace is embedded in China’s adherence to the principle of “peaceful reunification and one country, two systems”, as well as its following of a path of peaceful development.
Scholars agree that China’s development in the past 70 years is a hard-won achievement, and the Chinese people will surely love and cherish the current peaceful environment and work with other countries to build a community with a shared future for mankind and a better world
