Last year, China repeatedly suggested pursuing harmony on the basis of peaceful coexistence and working together for this one and only planet Earth, emphasizing the promotion of the building of a community with a shared future for mankind.
In the face of global challenges, the world needs to work together and help each other.
One area where this is vital is eliminating poverty, which has been a common dream of humanity and a common challenge faced by the Global South.
Over 280 million people suffered from acute hunger in 2023, and about 733 million faced chronic hunger in the same year, around 150 million more than in 2019, persistently lacking safe, nutritious food, according to a new UN Trade and Development report.
China, meanwhile, lifted nearly 800 million people out of poverty over a 40-year period, which accounted for more than 75 percent of global poverty reduction in the same period, completing the poverty reduction goals of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development ahead of schedule.
However, worldwide prosperity and stability cannot be built on the basis of the poor getting poorer and the rich getting richer. As a member of the Global South, China has always championed South-South cooperation, carried out agricultural aid projects and poverty reduction demonstration cooperation projects, and joined the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty, making significant contributions to global poverty reduction.
From winning the battle against poverty to outlining eight actions to support global development, China has demonstrated that poverty in developing countries can be solved, and vividly demonstrated its persistence in both "giving people fish and teaching them how to fish."
Therefore, in the face of diversity and multi-polarization, the world needs mutual respect and trust, open cooperation, mutual benefit and win-win results. To help make this happen, China has insisted on global consultation, joint construction and sharing, adopting the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013, to create new engines for global economic growth and a new paradigm for international cooperation.
Over the past decade, China has signed BRI cooperation documents with more than 150 countries and 30 plus international organizations, data from the Ministry of Commerce revealed.
The BRI serves as a good example of equal and mutually beneficial cooperation between nations based on win-win solutions, said Ali Oguz Dirioz, an associate professor of international relations at Ankara's TOBB University of Economics and Technology.
No matter how the international situation changes, the general direction of human development and the global community's shared future will not change. Tech innovation is poised to help drive this human development. In this regard, China's ongoing achievements in sci-tech continues to provide new global opportunities for the world, with mutually beneficial cooperation and common prosperity.
In the era of globalization, what is needed is not to create a divisive gap, but to build a bridge of communication and pave a smooth road for cooperation. Any decoupling, building small courtyards with high walls, disrupting supply chains as well as economic coercion, are attempts to turn back the wheel of history.
Ambassador Cai Run, head of the Chinese Mission to the EU, said China is ready to share development opportunities with the wider world, "We believe that a better China means a better world, and a better world means a better China."
In 2025, the right path for humankind is to live in harmony on the basis of peaceful coexistence and working together for this one and only planet Earth.