| An Annual Policy Presentation At The Jordan Royal National Defense College By Ambassador Yue Xiaoyong |
| 2012-03-14 18:25 |
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The Honorable Brigadier General Taha Mufady Al-Mawajdeh,
Classmates and officers,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Saleem Alaikom.
First of all, I would like to thank you, Brigadier General Al-Mawajdeh, for kindly inviting me to visit your wonderful college and attend this excellent class with so many most talented officers and friends around. The Royal National Defense College has earned by your long-time efforts a well-established reputation as the cradle of modern senior defense strategy officials for Jordan Armed Forces and brother countries. I am proud and honored to extend greetings here to the whole faculty and all the friends present, with best wishes for the development of your college, for the continuous strengthening of friendly exchanges and cooperation between your college and your Chinese partner, the PLA National Defense University, and for the further expansion of bilateral military ties between China and Jordan.
I would take this opportunity to share with you my views regarding Sino-Jordanian relationship, China's domestic and foreign policies.
The Sino-Jordan friendly relationship is strong and promising. Over the past 35 years since the establishment of our diplomatic relations on 7th April, 1977, owing to the great and wise guidance by leaders of both sides, a solid foundation has been laid for our relations and an ever growing momentum maintained. Dialogues between our top leaders and multi-level exchanges are well kept, close communication and coordination on the international and regional arena strengthened. The mutual political trust has hence been enhanced and cooperation in many fields bore encouraging fruits. With joint efforts, our bilateral trade has increased by seven times during 2001-2010. In 2011, Sino-Jordanian trade reached $2.78 billion in total, with a rise of 35.2% comparing to that of 2010. China has become the second largest trading partner and import source of Jordan after Saudi Arabia. Business communities of the two countries have been actively promoting two-way investment and cooperation. The large-scale Chinese exhibition is held in Amman every year with big success. China has also been providing more training programs than ever to empower Jordanian talents. Based on South-to-South cooperation as developing countries, the Chinese government has been increasing assistance to Jordan with projects such as hospital, water supply system, low-income family housing and sports stadium. They are all widely welcomed and appreciated by local people.
Our cooperation in cultural, educational and many other fields has been expanded dynamically. As requested by Jordanian side, China in cooperating with Jordanian institutes and universities has increased support for Chinese language teaching in Jordan through establishment of Confucius Centers and sending to Jordan our best Chinese language professors. We have offered more than ever opportunities for Jordanian young people to study in China, a growing number of Chinese students also come here to learn splendid Arab culture and language. Sino-Jordanian cultural exchanges have been enhanced smoothly. And above all our bilateral exchanges and cooperation in military field has witnessed rapid expansion with a jump of exchanging visits, training programs and cooperation. It is our belief that assistance and help between our two sides, both as developing countries, is always mutual. We would feel happy to see that our assistance and support, never with any preconditions attached, to Jordan helped Jordan's development and improved people's livelihood. By so doing we are holding our hands together to learn from each other in a bid to achieve common progress. We highly appreciate government and people of Jordan and Arab countries as a whole for unwaveringly supporting us in questions regarding China's core national interests such as that of Taiwan or those regarding our local autonomous regions of Tibet and Xinjiang. At the 35th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Jordan, I am fully confident that by working together, Sino-Jordanian friendship will see further growth, our all-round mutual beneficial cooperation greater expansion. There may be differences here or there between China and Jordan as a result of our different culture, history, political system, geography or population. Yet why could our friendship, cooperation and Sino-Arab relationship have been able to keep growing? The reason is simple: we always treat each other on the basis of equality, mutual respect for sovereignty, non-interference into each other's internal affairs and firmly abide by the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and basic norms of international law in dealing with common challenges we meet. All these strengthen our friendship and enhance our mutual trust.
Ladies and Gentlemen
Let me here give some words for China's domestic and foreign policies. Over the past 30 and more years of reform and opening-up, the most significant achievement for China is the successful obtaining of the fast stable economic development and social advancement. Our people feel happy. They support our central government's policy and national development path. The size of China's economy in 2010 was 16 times that of 1978, and the share of China's economy in the world's total increased from 1.8% to 9.3% over the same period, thus emerging as the world's second largest economy. In 2011, China's GDP reached RMB47.2 trillion, or $7 trillion, up by 9.2% annually. From 2001 when China joined the WTO to 2010, China imported an average of $750 billion worth of goods per year, creating a great many jobs and investment opportunities for its trading partners. During the same period, foreign-invested companies in China sent out $261.7 billion in profits, with an average annual growth of 30%. The Arab states are now China's seventh largest trading partner. In the recent ten years, our bilateral trade has grown at over 30% per annum. In 2011, Sino-Arab trade kept its growth momentum and the trade volume reached $91.56 billion during the first six months. Meanwhile, China's direct outbound investment grew by over 40% every year, reaching $68.8 billion and ranking fifth in the world in 2010. In 2011, China's export grew by 20.3% and import by 24.9%. It utilized $116 billion of foreign direct investment. Even the disturbance in Arab countries since 2010 didn't quite hinder China's enthusiasm to invest in the region, and the accumulated China's investment here reached $15 billion by 2011. Chinese companies have completed contracting projects of $100 billion in Arab world, which has become one of China's fastest increasing contracting projects regions. Among 26 plans in overseas exhibitions to be held by China Council for the Promotion of International Trade in 2012, 11 will be held in Arab countries. All these speak for themselves loud and clear that China cares for the stability and development of the region, and our cooperation is a very potential one with a bright future in store.
China has indeed made remarkable achievements over the past 30 years. However, as the largest developing country in the world, China still faces daunting and complex challenges. For example, with a population of 1.3 billion, China's per capita GDP reached only $4400 in 2010, ranking as low as around the 100th place in the world. There are still 150 million Chinese peoples living under the poverty line in accordance with the UN living standard of $1.25 every person per day. Unbalanced development still exists between the urban and rural areas and among different regions, economic growth is increasingly constrained by resource shortage and environmental problems, and the structural hindrance remains acute. The urgent need are called for to constantly enhance capacity for independent innovation, improve the living standard of Chinese people and social security system, and promote social harmony and progress. All those require Chinese people's constant struggle and long-time efforts.
Looking ahead, we are filled with confidence. We will firmly continue with China's independent development path a |