Honorable Ibrahim Mohammed Awal, Minister of Business Development of the Presidency,
Respected Professor Mathew Tsamenyi, the CEIBS Africa Executive Director,
Respected Mr.David Amoo-Osae, President of CEIBS Alumni Association Ghana Chapter,
Honorable Members of the CEIBS Alumni Association,
Distinguished Alumni, Invited Guests,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Good evening! I am very happy to meet all the outstanding alumni of CEIBS. CEIBS has a network of alumni associations with a strong lineup and an active organization all over the world. The excellent alumni from all walks of life have demonstrated their talents in many fields of society, creating value and serving the public. It is an important force in the economic and social development in Ghana as well as in Africa.
The theme for tonight's event is Igniting Entrepreneur’s Global Dreams; The Journey of China. Since the establishment, the People's Republic of China has gone through an unprecedented, magnificent and extremely extraordinary journey. Since China started the reform and opening up, and especially since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), China has encountered profound and fundamental changes, scored comprehensive and pioneering achievements and made fresh headway in national development. The Chinese nation, with an entirely new posture, now stands tall and firm in the east. We are closer to and more confident, more capable than ever before of making the goal of national great rejuvenation a reality.
Recently, the Time magazine published a cover article entitled "China Won" in both English and Chinese. More and more countries, political parties and scholars have begun to explore the secret behind the "China miracle." Developing countries, especially African countries pay close attention to China's development model in the hope of learning from China's successful development experience, accelerating its economic development and improving the quality of people’s livelihood. Here, I would like to share with you some of my thoughts.
Firstly, this is due to the path China has found which suits its national conditions. The path determines the fate. There is no universally applicable social system and development path in the world. The best development path is one that suits a country’s national conditions. In other words, each country can have its own model, just as the English proverb goes, "All roads leads to Rome."
Since the Opium War of 1840, China had experienced more than a century of turmoil and war. The Chinese people with lofty ideals "opened their eyes to see the world" and tried hard to explore the path of saving the nation and the country. After several failed attempts such as constitutional monarchy, parliamentary democracy and presidential system, China finally chose the socialism path. This is a historic choice and the people's choice. In the past 40 years of reform and opening up, China has made sustained economic growth and entered the middle and upper-income countries from low-income countries and is moving toward high-income countries. China has already become the second largest economy in the world, the largest manufacturing country, the largest trading country of goods, the largest foreign exchange reserves country, the second largest foreign investment country and the world's largest tourism market. China has contributed more than 30 percent of the world’s economic growth over the years. It took China several decades to realize the goal which the western capitalist powers have achieved for several hundred years, creating a miracle in the history of human development! This fully demonstrates that the Chinese people are marching on the right path. China's development offers a new option for other countries and nations who want to speed up their development while preserving their independence; and it offers Chinese wisdom and a Chinese approach to solving problems facing mankind.
Secondly, this is due to the strong leadership of the Communist Party of China. Since its foundation, the CPC has gone through a glorious course of 96 years and has shouldered the historic mission of realizing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation without hesitation. Since the 1920s, against the background of internal turmoil, external aggression and unprecedentedly severe social crisis, the Chinese Communist Party united the Chinese people to defeat Japanese imperialism, overthrow the reactionary Kuomintang Government and complete the New Democratic Revolution through 28 years of arduous struggle and establish the People's Republic of China. After 1949, the Chinese Communist Party united the people and led them in completing the socialist revolution, establishing socialism as China’s basic system and completing the broadest and most profound social transformation in the history of Chinese nation. It created the fundamental political conditions and the institutional foundation for achieving all development and progress in China today.
Since 1978, the Chinese Communist Party has united and led the people in carrying out a great new revolution of reform and opening up. The people's livelihood has been significantly improved. The overall national strength and the international status have risen significantly. Socialism with Chinese characteristics under the leadership of the CPC has enabled China to stride ahead to catch up with the times and to achieve a tremendous transformation: China has stood up, grown rich and is becoming strong.
Third, this is due to the spirit of China that provides inexhaustible impetus to China and its people. Chinese people have a "family and country complex" since ancient times. The spirit of China is both the national spirit with patriotism as its core and the spirit of the times with the reform and innovation at its core. It is the soul of our country that thrives on our hearts and is a powerful spiritual power driving us ahead. If a nation or a country has no spiritual pillar, it means it has no soul and it will lose vitality, creativity and charisma. Our spiritual motivation comes from China's 5,000 years treasure of civilizations. It is the spiritual home which every Chinese is proud of. The patriotism embodied in the poem “Everyone dies; when my day comes, may my loyalty to the country be inscribed into the history.”, the spirit of dedication to the country inscribed in the poem "No matter how humble I am, I dare not forget worrying about my nation", the spirit of harmony as in "Harmony is the most precious", the spirit to serve the country as in "To care the world when you are better off", the awe-inspiring spirit as in “Never be corrupted by wealth and status, Never depart from principle due to poverty or humble position, Never bow down to power or coercion”, the way of getting along with others as in “Do unto others as you would be done”, all these excellent Chinese traditional culture have deeply affected generations of Chinese people.
The immortal revolutionary spirit at the time of war, the pioneering spirit of "arduous struggle, bold exploration, always taking into account the interests of others and selfless dedication" in the early days of the founding of New China, the great socialist spirit of co-operation "When trouble occurs at one spot, help comes from all quarters", the spirit of the Chinese astronauts that “being especially good at tackling hardship, dealing with problems, and making contribution”, all these spirits are full of distinctive Chinese characteristics which were created by the Chinese Communist Party in leading the people of all ethnic groups in the country to make courageous advances and to guide the generations of Chinese people.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Last month, the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party was successfully held in Beijing. The meeting proposed a series of new theories and new ideas and clearly outlined the timetable and road map for building a great modern socialist country. By 2020, China will build a moderately prosperous society in all respects. By 2035, China will basically realize the socialist modernization. By the middle of this century, China will be built into a great modern socialist country that is prosperous and strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious and beautiful. Under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party, the Chinese people will embark on a new journey.
On the new journey, we will deepen the supply-side structural reform and accelerate the building of an innovative country. We will attach importance to the development of real economy and vigorously improve the quality of the supply system. We will speed up the development of advanced manufacturing industries and promote the further integration of the Internet, big data, artificial intelligence with real economy, cultivate new momentum and build a manufacturing power. We will step up the building of a national innovation system, deepen the reform of the Science and Technology system, strengthen the support for the innovation of SMEs, stimulate and protect the entrepreneurship, and encourage public innovation. We will implement the development concept of innovation, coordination, greenness, openness and sharing and build a modern economic system. We will continue to explore new ways for coordinating the development of new regions and vigorously promote the well-coordinated development of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei regions and facilitate the development of the Yangtze River Economic Belt. We will adopt high standards to build the Xiong'an New Area, Guangdong, Hong Kong, Macau Area and build a world-class urban agglomeration to create a new economic growth pole.
On the new journey, we will make a new ground in pursuing opening up on all fronts and unswervingly safeguard and improve people's livelihood. China's door to the world will be more and more open. We will follow the principle of jointly building through consultation to meet the interests of all, strengthen the cooperation with all parties, deepen the construction of the "One Belt, One Road" initiative and achieve mutual benefits and win-win results. We will implement a high-standard liberalization and facilitation of trade and investment, fully implement the pre-establishment national treatment plus a negative list across the broad, significantly ease market access, further open the service sector and protect the legitimate rights and interests of foreign investors. We will grant more powers to pilot free trade zones to conduct reform, explore the opening of free trade ports, and form a globally-oriented net work of free trade. We will continue to implement targeted poverty reduction and alleviation measures, and constantly meet the people's growing needs for a better life. We will continue to promote social fairness and justice, and by the year 2020, all rural residents living below the current poverty line will be lifted out of poverty. In addition, we will enhance people's sense of gain, happiness and security.
On the new journey, we will forge a new form of international relations and promote the building of a community of shared future for mankind. In face of the current global uncertainty and challenges, China will, guided by the principle of upholding justice while pursuing shared interests, continue to hold high the banner of peace, development, cooperation and mutual benefits. China has actively developed global partnership and expanded the convergence of interests with other countries. China will forge a new form of international relations featuring mutual respect, fairness, justice, and win-win cooperation. We will forge a mode of vibrant economic growth, an open and win-win cooperation, a just and reasonable governance and a balanced and inclusive development. China will seek self-development while driving the world economy to realize common development. We will promote the grand career of forging a community of common destiny for all mankind to create more opportunities for the world, and work with all parties to lead the world economy to a path of vibrant, sustainable, balanced and inclusive growth, to build up a long-lasting peaceful, generally safe, commonly prosperous, open and inclusive as well as clean and beautiful world.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
China is walking on a new journey with faster pace of innovation, better development quality and a higher level of opening up. China's development will create more new opportunities for the world.
The world will benefit from it. Next year, China will hold the first international import fair. The turnover of the just concluded 2017 Tmall global online shopping carnival on November 11th reached 168.269 billion yuan compared with 120.749 billion yuan in 2016, year-on-year increase of nearly 40%. Consumers from 225 countries and regions and 140,000 brands around the world contribute to the feast of the world's largest online shopping festival. In the next 15 years, China is expected to import 24 trillion US dollars of goods, absorb 2 trillion US dollars FDI and its total outbound investment will reach 2 trillion US dollars. China will be more closely integrated with the world market and China will provide more driving force for the world’s economic development.
Africa will benefit from it. There are now more than 3,300 Chinese enterprises investing in Africa. Chinese enterprises have invested in 20 industrial zones in 15 African countries with a total investment of 5.38 billion US dollars, attracting 435 enterprises with a total output value of 19.35 billion US dollars. This has created more jobs than any other country has done. As China further promotes the "One Belt and One Road" initiative, the Asia-Europe-Africa continent will achieve profound connectivity and Africa's infrastructural construction will usher in greater development. More Chinese enterprises will invest in Africa in the future to promote industrialization, informatization and urbanization as well as agricultural modernization in Africa.
Ghana will benefit from it. The economic cooperation between China and Ghana is among the forefront in Africa. In the first nine months of this year, the total of Ghana's exports to China exceeded the whole export volume in 2016, and the prospects for economic and trade cooperation between the two countries are overwhelming. China's aid, financing, investment and contracting projects in Ghana are numerous. A new batch of major cooperation projects and livelihood projects are to be launched next year which will bring more benefits to the Ghanaian people. China supports the "One District, One Factory", "One Village One Dam" and "planting for food and jobs" and other major initiatives by the new government of Ghana. We will encourage more Chinese enterprises to invest in Ghana and create more jobs for Ghanaian youth. China will also provide more scholarships and training opportunities for the Ghanaian from all walks of life to foster more social elites and professionals and technicians so as to provide the necessary support for the economic transformation of Ghana.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
By conclusion, I would like to thank the Ghana Alumni Association of China Europe International Business School for its kind invitation to provide me with a platform to exchange ideas on China's development. China's development is a historical process and I would like to continue my discussion with you in the future.
Thank you!