Since the 16th National Congress of the CPC in 2005, under the guidance of the Scientific Outlook on Development, China's GDP has risen to the world's second from the sixth. With the boost of China's domestic economic strength and scientific and technological power, as well as the improvement of the Chinese people's livelihood and national quality, China is injecting more and more positive power into the world.

People's Daily interviewed several 18th National Congress delegates, and all agreed that China has realized big changes and leapt far forward in the past decade, making China a brand-new world beacon.

Prosperity and feedback to the rest of the world

"No other country in human history has done what China has done in such a short period: Change the global economic and political domain, as well as global production and cooperation mode by such a large-scale. China makes effective use of the overall peaceful international environment and the opportunities brought by economic globalization. At the same time, China is returning to the rest of the world with its own prosperity and stability, acting as a driving force for global growth and peace."

Vice Foreign Minister Fu Ying, who is also a delegate, a participant and witness for China's diplomatic cause, shared her experience with People's Daily on the continuous rise of "the Chinese power" on the world stage in the past decade.

The 16th National Congress put forward the policy of "building friendship and partnership with neighboring countries" to actively promote cooperation with surrounding nations. In the past decade, through a series of effective bilateral and multilateral measures, China has helped to drive the economic development in surrounding regions.

Fu Ying recalled that the idea of setting up China and ASEAN Free Trade Area triggered heated discussions when it was first proposed. Some people were hopeful while others were worried. Today, China's total trade volume with ASEAN countries totals $360 billion, up by almost seven times. "In the annual China-ASEAN Expo in Nanning, whenever I see those excited entrepreneurs of small and medium-sized enterprises directly get into business the moment they get off planes, I deeply feel the tangible benefits brought to people in these countries by the increase of trade and economic growth between China and ASEAN."

In the past decade, small and big wars occurred around the world. However, in Asia, the main trend is peace and stability. This closely relates to China's efforts to publicize and implement the policy of peaceful development. China actively upholds a peaceful solution to disputes through dialogue and cooperation. China is also working actively to safeguard continuous peace on the whole with neighboring countries.

China's irreplaceable role in the global financial crisis and its far-reaching influence more clearly reflects the important status of "Chinese factors" in the global pattern.

While developed economies like the United States, European countries and Japan all slipped into the mess of the economic crisis and even experienced social turmoil, China's financial system remains stable, its economy registers an annual growth rate of 8 percent and its trade and investment keeps rising steadily. China has become the major engine for world economic recovery and growth. China upholds the concept of helping each other through difficulties and opposes all kinds of trade and investment protectionism. Its proposal has inflicted huge impact on the coping with global financial crisis. China did not hit them while they were down, but it keeps and promotes various economic activities in Europe, and participates in multilateral aid. Fu Ying has many times experienced events where Chinese leaders offered to participate in activities of coordination and of strengthening global confidence. She deeply felt the international community's praise and recognition for China. Fu believes this process is helpful to China. "China's influence is growing stronger and Chinese entrepreneurs' confidence and ability is growing stronger."

At international conferences, Fu Ying often listens to people speaking about issues related to China: Why is China able to round up wisdom, finance and materials to tackle huge social headaches? Why is China able to pursue correct policies and – once the target is fixed – why are so many different generations, administrations and people able to work unswervingly to achieve it?

In Fu Ying's opinion, China has proven to the rest of the world the charm of the system and road of socialism with Chinese characteristics by its own achievements. "We cherish a strong and representative party and collective leadership, decision-making procedure based on democratic centralism as well as effective administrative and supervisory agencies. All of this keeps changing and growing, based on rich historical and cultural heritage. The Chinese people have accumulated experience via history. China's success has again proved, enriched and developed the world's diversity."

Going global is a win-win strategy

The improvement of citizens' scientific knowledge is the basis for a continuous rise of a country's national strength. Delegate of the CPC 18th National Congress and secretary of the secretariat of China Association of Science and Technology, Xu Yanhao told People's Daily that in the past 10 years, China has already on the preliminary stage set up a national work plan to promote the whole nation's scientific quality, with increasing development of public services for citizens' scientific quality improvement. The public's desire to improve their scientific knowledge has been tangibly fulfilled.

The improvement of Chinese laborers' scientific knowledge will make contributions to a higher production efficiency and quality all around the world and bring more cheap and high-quality commodities to consumers in every corner of the world. This means a better production and living standard for the whole world's consumers. Xu said, "China will become an example for the rest of world in terms of the improvement of the whole nation's scientific quality."

A rising quality of the nation will stimulate the release of the country's capability. After years of development, China has now become the world's manufacturing center, said Rui Xiaowu, board chairman of China Electronics Corporation, also a delegate. In his eyes, this is one of the biggest contributions that China has made to the rest of the world in the past 10 years. "If power is cut in Shenzhen and its surrounding areas, then we'll see price fluctuation in global electronic products. China's role as the world's manufacturing center is not easily replaced and it is developing as a creation center." There are realistic examples: China's huge manufacturing power has helped to cut the cost of products around the world. People now have easier access to products of higher quality. People around the world are now able to enjoy the fruits of modern scientific and technological development at a higher level.

China is implementing the policy of "going global." Based on its realistic conditions, Chinese enterprises are actively and stably expanding businesses abroad. In 2011, Chinese businesses accelerated its pace of "going global," with their foreign direct investment in non-financial sectors reaching $60.1 billion.

Chinese companies like Huawei and Lenovo keep increasing investments overseas, and many Chinese companies have set up research and development center abroad. These companies have employed a large number of locals. Cooperating with the Boston Port in the U.S., China Ocean Shipping (Group) Company has not only saved 9,000 jobs closely related to marine shipping, but also created a total of 26,000 jobs for locals. In five African countries, China has set up or is establishing six China-Africa economic and trade cooperation zones. By now, about 18,000 Chinese businesses are investing overseas in every corner of the world. According to statistics from PwC's Consulting, in 2011, Chinese mainland enterprises' overseas merger and acquisition trade hit the record of 207 items, up by 10 percent over the same period of previous year, and with a 12 percent growth of total trade volume at $42.9 billion. In the process of going global, Chinese enterprises are not only expanding the space of their own development, but also conducting cooperation with less developed countries on the improvement of their livelihood and their independent development capability. China is actively taking on its social responsibilities, bringing welfare to local people and is thus a typical example of successful South-South cooperation.

From "Chinese dreams" to "Chinese contributions"

In the past 10 years, China has achieved tremendous achievements in peaceful development by seizing an important strategic period of opportunity. Under the leadership of the CPC Central Committee with Hu Jintao as the general secretary, the Party and people of all ethnic groups have made joint efforts to turn "Chinese dreams" into "Chinese contributions" that have promoted the whole world's common development.

As a scholar, Hu Angang, head of Research Institute of National Conditions of Tsinghua University, prefers to use strict statistics to express his opinions. According to the current dollar estimate, the proportion of China's import volume to the world's total jumped from 3.35 percent in 2000 to 9.94 percent in 2011, while that of the United States dropped from 18.73 percent to 12.32 percent. In the same period of time, the contribution rate of China's import volume to the world's total is13.03 percent, while that of the U.S. is 8.63 percent. China's contribution is almost 1.51 times that of the United States. The proportion of China's export volume to the world's total grew from 3.86 percent in 2000 to 10.42 percent in 2011, while for the U.S., the proportion fell from 12.11 to 8.13 percent. During this period, China's export volume contributed 14.02 percent to the world's total export volume growth, while that of the United States stands at 5.94 percent. China's contribution rate is 2.36 times that of the United States. Besides, in 2010, the added value of China's manufacturing industry accounted for 19.8 percent of the world's total, surpassing the United States by 19.4 percent, which means China has shaken the U.S. status as "the world's top industry country" in the past 120 years since 1890.

Hu Angang said, a country's contribution to the world is decided by two factors: One is the country's relative economic scale and the other is this country's relative development speed. Not only does China enjoy a big relative economic and trade scale, but it is also growing fast. China's annual GDP growth rate hit 10.4 percent, while the annual growth rate of its total import and export volume hit 20.4 percent. No matter how we do the calculation, the conclusion is the same: China has already become the biggest contributor in terms of the world's economic growth. Hu Said, "this is the significance of China's rise."

China's economic growth is visible to its people. In 2011, the Chinese Government raised the threshold for poverty. In rural areas, people living under this new poverty line are registered at 122 million, accounting for 18.6 percent of the rural population and about 9 percent of the country's total population. This shows that in the past 10 years, China has not only cut its absolutely poor population on the largest scale in history, but also made the largest-scale reduction of absolutely poor people when compared with other countries during the same period of time, thus making huge contributions to the world's poverty reduction cause. Also, China has helped lay a solid foundation for the achievement of the UN Millennium Development Goals, greatly praised by the international community.

How can China manage to achieve this? Hu believes that it's attributed to the Chinese Government's great emphasis on the people's livelihood.

More than a decade ago, the CPC Central Committee and the State Council of China made a decision that from 2001 to 2010, the whole country's human resources, wealth and materials would be made full use of to reduce the country's poor population.

In 2011, the Chinese Government formulated Outline for Development-oriented Poverty Reduction for China's Rural Areas (2011-2020), explicitly pointing out that by 2020, we'll make sure that those who have been lifted out of poverty are not lacking in food, clothes, compulsory education, basic medical care service and housing. Moreover, the growth rate of farmers' net per-capita income will be higher than that of the country's average while the indexes for major public service items approach the nation's average level.

Hu said in the past, China had the largest poor population in the world, with a high poverty incidence. However, during a relatively short period of time, China has managed to cut the poor population on a large scale, with no existing experience to learn from or successful examples to follow. Today, however, China is the first country to achieve the success and also the first example of poverty reduction on such a large scale.