Seeking peace in foreign affairs, harmony in domestic construction and reconciliation on the Taiwan issue are the top priorities in the agenda of the Communist Party of China (CPC), a prestigious CPC theorist said Thursday.

"The CPC has endeavored to combine the development of a market-oriented economy with socialist characteristics with the construction of an harmonious society run by democracy, law and advanced culture", said Zheng Bijian, chairman of the China Reform Forum, an important think-tank to the Chinese cabinet.

Addressing an international seminar on East Asia cooperation and China-US relations, Zheng, former executive vice president of the Party School of the CPC Central Committee, said that China's experience showed that an extreme democracy without a legal system can only bring disaster. Only by a complete democratic system and the expansion of citizen's political participation in diversified democratic forms can benefit the Chinese people.

Zheng said the CPC's understanding of socialism can be interpreted as boosting production forces in domestic economic construction and upholding peace in foreign policy.

"The CPC values the principle of peace, seeking common ground while shelving difference and treating neighbors well", stressed Zheng.

"The CPC's profound understanding of its own people's aspiration centers on the alleviation of poverty, national prosperity, social harmony and the well-being of the ordinary people," Zhang told about 20 participants at the seminar.

He also pointed out that economic globalization helped push forward China's peaceful development, adding that China could secure the international resources in need of the modernization construction through the economic globalization process.

"China has no need and intention to challenge and overthrow the current international order by violent approaches and always proposes to establish a new international political and economic order through reform", the theoretician asserted.

(Xinhua News Agency November 4, 2005)