Jusuf Wanandi, vice chairman of Board of Trustees, CSIS Foundation, gives a keynote speech at the opening ceremony of International Dialogue on the Chinese Dream in Shanghai on Dec.7, 2013. [China.org.cn]

The China Dream and Peaceful Development

Jusuf Wanandi

Vice Chair, Board of Trustees, CSIS Foundation

For centuries China had been the centre of human civilisation, and yet almost always defensive and inward looking. Except during the Ching Dynasty, which is Manchu and not Han, some regions adjacent to China had been incorporated.

China was contended with itself when the region recognized it as a big power. That changed when Western colonialism, starting with the Opium War, imposed on her to open up for trade including opium. And since then on many of China were invaded or occupied by foreign powers through wars or temporary occupation.

The struggle for China since then, even in the declining Ching Dynasty, was how to repel the West and Japan as colonizers and to retrieve all parts of China that had been occupied by those powers with the birth of PRC Mao managed to unify China in 1949. A Herculean task was faced by China during its nation building efforts to move the country again. After more than 35 years of national, especially economic development, under the leadership of Chairman Deng since1978 until he stepped down, the realization of the Chinese Dream to become a wealthy and powerful country at long last showed its concrete results.

Now, under Chairman and President Xi Jinping China can look forward to its dream to come true. The results of the Third Plenum of the 18th Central Committee Meeting are reform oriented, especially in responding to the new challenges China is facing for its better future.

The dream of China is to become strong and wealthy country, and has a utilitarian purpose, and the reforms adopted in the Third Plenum are making headway to become a reality.

China is aware that these reforms will reap external reactions but it expects more positive than negative ones. There is a need for China to rise or develop peacefully, and for that China should be able to create a community of interest between China and other countries, especially with her close neighbors.