China's aspiration for multipolar world explained

China's foreign policy has long been misinterpreted or deliberately distorted in the West, with many assuming that a rapidly rising China will behave just like the United States as a hegemonic power.

China, however, rejects such claims. Its foreign policy is based on the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence: mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity; mutual non-aggression; non-interference in each other's internal affairs; equality and mutual benefit; and peaceful coexistence.

While the term "multipolar world" is missing in official US vocabulary, it is central to China's vision for a global order where developing countries, especially those in the Global South, have a bigger say in global governance.

The recently published book, China's Foreign Policy and the Making of a Multipolar World — Changes Unseen in a Century, edited by London-based China specialists Keith Bennett and Carlos Martinez, offers valuable insights into China's foreign policy, its historical context, its positions on global issues and its vision for the future.

Published by Praxis Press this month, the book features 10 essays by nine Chinese and international experts and scholars on China, each providing unique perspectives on critical questions, such as whether China is an expansionist and imperial power or whether the Belt and Road Initiative for building connectivity is a "debt trap" as labeled by some China hawks.

According to Bennett and Martinez, the 10 essays share a common premise that China's emergence as a global power, far from being a threat to humanity as claimed by many in the West, is in reality a beacon of hope for a just, peaceful and multipolar world.

In their joint essay on "the world is undergoing profound changes unseen in a century", a phrase used by President Xi Jinping, the two argue that the collective rise of the Global South, with China in the vanguard, is bringing a decisive end to the unipolar moment briefly enjoyed by the US following the dramatic changes in the international landscape in the 1990s.

The authors commend Xi's strategic vision of building a community with a shared future for humanity, highlighting the initiatives proposed by China on global security, development, civilization and governance.

Ken Hammond, professor emeritus of East Asian and Global History at New Mexico State University, provides a historical perspective on China's foreign policy since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949.

He traces it back to China's bitter experience under Western and Japanese imperialism in the "century of humiliation" that followed the Opium War. This history is critical to understanding China's current mindset.

Jenny Clegg, a China specialist who first visited the country in 1971, elaborates on the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence as a guiding framework for China's foreign policy over the decades.

In "How China's Peaceful Rise is Changing the World", an essay by Cheng Enfu, former president of the Academy of Marxism of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the author discusses China's global impact across six domains: science and technology, economy, politics, culture, ecology and people's livelihood.

With anti-China smear campaigns reaching hysterical levels in recent years, this book provides a more accurate portrayal of China's foreign policy, its philosophy of win-win cooperation in contrast to the zero-sum game pursued by the US, and China's strong opposition to a new Cold War that threatens to divide the world into confrontational blocs.

China's peaceful rise is remarkable, achieved over a few decades without waging wars, engaging in colonization, pursuing regime change or carrying out assassinations.

China firmly believes that countries with different histories, cultures and political systems can coexist and should cooperate for the benefit of their peoples and the world. BRICS, which includes a diverse group of countries, exemplifies this belief.

The world is undeniably shifting toward a multipolar global order.

It is an unstoppable trend that aligns with China's foreign policy vision and is also the aspiration for most countries in the world.

The author is a China Daily columnist.

chenweihua@chinadaily.com.cn