Regional cooperation essential to healthy development of Asia

At the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, on Saturday, President Xi Jinping promised that China will follow a road of peaceful development, continue opening up to share its development opportunities with other countries and uphold multilateralism to safeguard the international order based on international laws.

Xi also put forward suggestions for the development of Asia.

Mutual respect and trust should be prioritized, which entails respect for sovereignty, independence, territorial integrity and choice of political system, as well as road maps for development. With such respect, countries can establish mutual trust.

Security and stability come next, which requires all countries to settle their disputes and differences through dialogue and joint efforts to fight against terrorism and extremism.

Xi then proposed that Asian countries should work together to facilitate trade and investment, which will contribute to the prosperity of Asia.

Building Asia into an open and inclusive as well as a cooperative and innovative continent is what Xi envisioned in his speech.

As Xi said, Asia is one of the most dynamic regions in the world and it still has great potential for development. But at the same time, it faces the challenges of a lack of mutual trust, unbalanced economic development and security and governance problems that need to be settled.

All the suggestions he put forward are meant to call for joint efforts of all Asian countries to give full play to their advantages and tackle the problems they face.

With the rise of unilateralism and trade protectionism and the world's sole superpower trying to sow the seeds of disintegration against globalization, it is all the more imperative for countries in Asia to realize the importance of regional cooperation and integration.

China has been trying to set an example for the rest of the world and its Asian neighbors in particular by further opening its door wider to the world and by establishing mechanisms for settling disputes and differences with other countries.

The Belt and Road Initiative that China is advancing is a platform and mechanism that enables all countries to participate on an equal footing and benefit from cooperation.

China is a beneficiary of globalization and it would not have achieved what it has without opening up to cooperation with all countries in the past four decades, which explains why it strongly opposes any backpedaling on economic globalization.

It also explains why China has been maintaining the development of an open and inclusive world in which all countries enjoy equal opportunities for development.

President Xi said what China means in his speech at the CICA conference.