By He Yin, People’s Daily

In response to the initiative of President Xi Jinping of China’s support for developing good neighborly relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran, delegations of the two countries recently held talks in Beijing.

In a joint statement released with China, Saudi Arabia and Iran agreed to reopen their embassies and diplomatic missions within two months, hold talks between their foreign ministers on the arrangement of ambassadors’ exchange, and explore ways to improve bilateral ties.

The Saudi-Iranian agreement to restore diplomatic relation was hailed by Wang Yi, director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, as “a victory for dialogue and peace” and has been widely welcomed worldwide.

The kindness and goodwill in China’s diplomacy are reflected in the country’s efforts to expand all-round diplomacy in a coordinated manner and to build a new type of international relations. China has had a growing network of friends, made more and more new friends, and strengthened ties with old ones.

China has never and will never invade or bully others, or seek hegemony. The country will take it as its mission to defend its core interests. It firmly opposes any form of hegemonism and power politics, and firmly opposes the Cold War mentality, camp-based confrontation, and acts to contain and hold back other countries’ development. It will resolutely safeguard its sovereignty, security and development interests.

The kindness and goodwill in China’s diplomacy are reflected in the country’s efforts to promote common prosperity of the world with its own high-quality development.

Recently, the Chinese path to modernization has become a hot topic around the world. Chinese modernization offers solutions to many challenges facing human development. It busts the myth that modernization is westernization; it creates a new form of human advancement; and it provides an important source of inspiration for the world, especially developing countries.

China hopes and believes that as more and more countries begin their own journey of modernization, the vision of building a community with a shared future for mankind will become true.

China’s development benefits the world and China cannot develop in isolation from the rest of the world. Amid rising unilateralism and protectionism, China will solidly promote high-level opening up, not only making good use of the global market and resources to develop itself, but also promoting common development of the world.

The kindness and goodwill in China’s diplomacy are reflected in the country’s efforts to firmly uphold and practice multilateralism and actively improve global governance.

Through the past ten years, Xi has put forward a host of major initiatives and proposals, including building a community with a shared future for mankind, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the common values of humanity, the Global Development Initiative and the Global Security Initiative. The core message of these initiatives is that countries are interdependent, mankind have a shared future, and the international community must get united for cooperation.

China believes that global governance should be promoted in accordance with the law and the principles of international law enshrined in the UN Charter; equity and justice must be upheld while hegemonism and selfish interests must be rejected; solidarity must be defended while division and confrontation must be abandoned.

People in developing countries are entitled to a better life, and developing countries are entitled to greater representation and a louder voice in international affairs.

China will take multilateralism as the way forward. It will promote the building of a community with a shared future for mankind, promote greater democracy in international relations, and make global governance more just and equitable. It will offer more, better Chinese insight and solutions to help meet humanity’s common challenges.

This year, China will follow the guidance of head-of-state diplomacy. It will ensure the success of the two major diplomatic events that the country will host at home- the first China-Central Asia Summit and the third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, which will be the showcase of the distinctive character of China’s diplomacy.

The first China-Central Asia Summit is expected to mark the latest practice of China to build an even closer China-Central Asia community with a shared future.

Ten years after its inception, the BRI has laid down a pathway toward common development, and created an array of national landmarks, livelihood projects, and milestones of cooperation. It  has brought nearly $1 trillion of investment, established over 3,000 cooperation projects, created some 420,000 jobs in countries along the routes and helped lift nearly 40 million people out of poverty.

As global development faces severe challenges, the third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation will promote high-quality development of Belt and Road cooperation and inject new impetus into building a community with a shared future for mankind.

The new journey of China’s diplomacy will be an expedition with glories and dreams, and it will also be a long voyage through stormy seas. China will continue to pursue the independent foreign policy of peace, and will continue to implement the mutually beneficial strategy of opening up. China will always be a builder of world peace, a contributor to global development, and a defender of the international order. It will keep writing new chapters in its distinctive major-country diplomacy in the new era.