上海日报：China has pledged to advance the Peaceful China Initiative to a higher level. How will this ensure China's sustainable development? And how should China present its achievements in this lnitiative to the whole world? What is China's vision for a peaceful future?
黄靖：I think "high level" means a high level of development, a high level of happiness, or a high standard of living for the people, and then a high level of safety. I mean, China has to be a safe country. Deng Xiaoping said a long time ago that “Development is a hard truth.” So, whatever China wants to do internally or externally, a sustainable development is a necessary condition.
If we look at the Third Plenum, I think all the requirements and all the principles raised as a plenum is about to guarantee the China's development would be sustained. Only by doing that can the Chinese people achieve a high level of life or happiness, and can China achieve a high level in terms of national capability and national influence. And on this level, of course, China will play a much more positive role in today's world. So, development is a key issue for us to understand today's China.Several principles have been long established ever since the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949. The first is equality. China treats all other countries on an equal footing. And that doesn't matter is a small or big country or nation. The second is mutual respect. China does respect as always the other countries and peoples, including their choices of life and the way they choose to go and so on and so forth. And third, last but not least, China makes sure the relationship China has with other people so other countries must be mutual beneficiary. Chinese always want to say the win-win situation. Like Chinese said, "The heaven will not drop for anything for you". In western, we said that "There is no free lunch". China has been China today is only because Chinese people has paid a huge price, and made extraordinary hard effort to achieve all those success. Only on this foundation that China can contribute to the human being as a whole. So in my view, I think it's very important and critical for China to let other people understand peaceful means, of course, China never launched war or never launched a war against others. But first and foremost, China's always tried to solve its problem by its own effort, not achieve at other people's expenses. That's not the Chinese way. Chinese way is always overcome all those difficulties and hardships by our own efforts.受访者 | 黄靖，上海外国语大学特聘教授，上海全球治理与区域国别研究院美国与太平洋地区研究所所长。出处 | “上海日报SHINE”视频号，2024年8月11日。