Xinhua News Agency: The 15th Annual Meeting of the New Champions is being held in Dalian. We noted that Klaus Schwab, Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, said that under the current complex international landscape, international cooperation is more important than ever. What’s your comment?
Mao Ning: The 15th Annual Meeting of the New Champions kicked off yesterday in Dalian. Premier of the State Council Li Qiang attended and addressed the opening plenary. Premier Li Qiang outlined China’s proposals on the meeting’s theme “Next Frontiers for Growth,” stressing that the depth of international cooperation determines the height of human development and calling on parties to embrace each other with open arms and work closely with each other, so as to form a strong synergy for global economic growth.
We need international cooperation to confront the growth predicament of the world economy. Economies make progress through exchange and inter-connectivity and fall behind because of seclusion and closedness. We need to approach development issues with a longer view and broader mind, join hands with others to make the pie bigger while pursuing one’s legitimate interests and cultivate new engines for growth.
We need international cooperation to seize the new opportunities brought by the sci-tech revolution and industrial transformation. Major sci-tech progress usually comes from unrelenting research, accumulation and extensive cooperation. The exploration of new frontiers should not be seen as a zero-sum game. It is a process where all players compete for excellence and make progress together. Resorting to the “small yard, high fence” approach cannot hold back the development of others; it only ends up constraining oneself.
We need international cooperation to promote green transition and deal with climate change. There is only one Earth for humanity. Growth in the future has to be premised on harmony between man and nature. We cannot slow down our pace in green transition in exchange for short-term growth, or practice protectionism in the name of green development or environmental protection.
Premier Li Qiang said China has continued to promote high-quality development, accelerate the cultivation of new quality productive forces, and foster new drivers of growth. The rapid growth of new industries and new drivers has buttressed the sound and sustained development of the Chinese economy, and created greater cooperation space for companies around the world. China will continue to expand high-standard opening up, further ease market access, steadily expand institutional opening up and bring more opportunities and a more favorable environment for foreign investors.
China stands ready to join hands with all countries to sail the giant ship of the world economy into a vast blue ocean and create an even brighter future for humanity.
AFP: I wanted to ask if the Foreign Ministry had any comments on the interview published yesterday by the Wall Street Journal with the American Ambassador Nicholas Burns, in which Ambassador Burns said that China was working to prevent normal interactions between Chinese and American citizens and also said that Chinese officials were working to prevent or intimidate people who attended embassy events.
Mao Ning: Ambassador Burns’s remarks do not reflect the facts. Those words stray from the important common understandings reached by the two presidents in San Francisco and the right way for the two countries to get along with each other. They are not conducive to the sound and steady growth of China-US relations.
China is guided by the principles of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation put forward by President Xi Jinping in growing relations with the US and we are committed to promoting people-to-people and cultural exchanges between the two countries. As we speak, an event named B