[CNR.cn]Jia Wenshan: President Xi Jinping's Lecture Injects New Hope for a Better Future for Mankind

Chinese President Xi Jinping was invited to deliver the keynote speech entitled "An Open and Innovative Asia for a World of Greater Prosperity" at the opening ceremony of the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference 2018. President Xi Jinping first reviewed China’s reform and opening up process over the past 40 years, summed up the successful experience he called “China’s second revolution”, and affirmed the achievements of this “revolution” in profoundly changing China and profoundly influencing the world. He points out the secret of the success of this "revolution": accompanied by the historical demands of the Chinese people for development, innovation, and a better life, it is in line with the trend of the times for the people of all countries in the world to develop, to cooperate, and to live in peace.

Today, existing globalization and global governance exist in name only, and mankind faces many challenges on a global scale, such as peace deficits, development deficits, and governance deficits. More and more people all over the world are awakening and calling for the emergence of a new type of globalization that is more open, equal, and inclusive, with interconnection as an important goal, and a new global order that guarantees common security and common prosperity, that is, the human destiny community comes into being.

On April 10th, President Xi Jinping responded to the willing of public opinion and the development of world history and announced at the Boao Forum that “China's door of opening up will not be closed and will only open even wider”. At the same time, Xi Jinping is also summoning the Asian people and the people of the world to work together to build a community of human destiny. The "Boao program" proposed by Xi Jinping for the first time in his keynote speech is actually an alias for China and Asian countries to deeply reflect on the situation of China and Asia's history and culture, and to learn in depth the "Asian program" that absorbs the strengths of countries in the world and brings together global wisdom. The Asian wisdom, Asian power, Asian consensus, and Asian vision brought together by the Boao Forum are the enhancement and sublimation of the Chinese program. This program not only embodies the Asian people's Prospect toward Asian economic integration, but also represents a major measure for the Asian people to jointly tackle and deal with the three major deficits in Asia and around the world.

The new reform and opening measures announced by President Xi Jinping are not only an improvement but also a revolution. In his speech, he emphasized that this is a "change and innovation." The author believes that in the eyes of President Xi Jinping, the goal of a new round of reform and opening up is not easily achieved, it needs perseverance, determination, fighting spirit and game playing. President Xi Jinping once emphasized: "The reform is a revolution. What changes is the institutional mechanism. What is moved is established interests. It has to take it serious." As domestic reforms, the promotion of globalization and the international order will also encounter strong resistance. This is why President Xi Jinping issued a warning: "Whoever rejects reform, who refuses to innovate, whoever lags behind the times will be eliminated by history."

Specifically, this reform must not only innovate the momentum of globalization, but also need to abandon the old ways of thinking, such as zero-sum thinking and the Cold War mentality, abandon and dismantle outdated power relations, such as hegemonism, abandon the old unequal civilized relationship, such as cultural imperialism and so on. In other words, in order to build a community of human destiny and build a new human civilization system, humankind needs courageously to eliminate or change the old, unacceptable, inequitable, disharmonious, non-interconnected, and unsustainable lifestyle.

In order to promote Asia’s openness and innovation and the prosperity and development of the world, in order to build a community of human destiny and a new system of human civilization, President Xi Jinping has announced to the world a series of major measures for opening to the outside world and promised to make it implement as soon as possible, which reflected that Xi Jinping, as a leader of a big country, injects new hopes for the future development of mankind in China, Asia and even the world. It is bound to make great contributions to build "Innovative Asia, a thriving world”.

(The author is a Distinguished Professor of School of Journalism at Renmin University of China and a researcher at the National Development and Strategy Institute)