In a lecture delivered at the Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies on March 28, Chinese Ambassador to the United States Zhou Wenzhong introduced China's ongoing drive toward building a harmonious society and its path of peaceful development. He also elaborated on the relationship between China and the United States. Excerpts follow:

China has been the fastest growing export market for the United States for three years in a row, and the trade between China and the United States has helped to create 4-8 million job opportunities in America.

Building a harmonious society

The harmonious society that China is trying to build features democracy and rule of law, fairness and justice, integrity and fraternity, vitality, stability and order, and harmony between man and nature.

China is at the primary stage of socialism, and will remain so for a long time to come. The primary stage means a stage of underdevelopment. It not only refers to the low level of productive forces, but also recognizes that China's socialist system still has room for improvement and is not yet mature. To liberate and develop productive forces and to achieve social fairness and justice are the two historical tasks for China.

Since the introduction of the reform and opening-up policy in the late 1970s, China has greatly improved the well being of its people, boosted its overall national strength and noticeably enhanced its international status. However, despite having the fourth largest gross domestic product, China still ranks behind 100 other countries in per-capita terms. There are still over 20 million rural people living in poverty and over 80 million people with disabilities throughout the country. Material wealth and resources at the disposal of the Central Government is limited. Developing China's productive forces remains an uphill task.

Another uphill task is institution building. The system and mechanism for the socialist market economy, although established and comprehensive, remains imperfect and immature. This results in unfair wealth distribution, a widening urban-rural gap, regional growth imbalance, corruption and violation of the rights and interests of vulnerable groups. Social fairness and justice lack sufficient safeguards. In addition, the tendency of overemphasis on economic growth and lack of attention to social fairness and justice also aggravate the insufficiency in institution building and increasingly salient social problems.

Our targets and major tasks by 2020 are:

-To build a comprehensive socialist democracy, legal system and rule of law by 2020 and provide better protection for the people's rights and interests;

-To gradually reverse the trend of widening disparity between urban and rural areas and between different regions, and basically formulate a reasonable and orderly income distribution structure so that household property and people's living standards will be generally increased;

-To provide relatively sufficient job opportunities, basically establish a social security system covering both urban and rural residents, improve basic public health service and greatly increase the management and service capabilities of the government;

-To noticeably improve the ethical and educational level and health of the entire population, and build up social ethics and harmonious interpersonal relationships;

-To noticeably increase the innovative capability of the public and achieve initial success in building an innovative nation;

-To further improve social management and order, increase efficiency in the use of natural resources, and noticeably improve the ecological environment.

Developing productive forces requires the guarantee of a continuously improving system. A good system helps to promote social harmony by fine-tuning social relations and better safeguarding social fairness and justice as well as boosting faster progress of productive forces. China will continue to follow the scientific concept on development and the policy of reform and opening up, and continue to develop the economy in a sustainable, fast and balanced way, so as to increase the social wealth and improve the living standards of the Chinese people. China will focus on the most practical problems that are of the greatest concern to the people and most directly affect their interests, such as education and public health. The goal is to promote social fairness and justice, improve management and allow everyone in the country to share the benefits of reform and economic growth.

Global significance

When reflected in China's foreign policy, the concept of harmonious society points to an inevitable choice of peaceful development, a choice that is based on our judgment of the current trend in the world and our historical heritage and real national conditions.

Profound and complex changes are taking place in the world, and many new developments and features deserve our close attention. But the overall international environment is favorable for China. Peace and development remain the general trend of the times and it is unlikely that a major war could break out in the near future. There is every possibility that we can secure a fairly long-term peaceful international environment and a favorable neighborhood environment.

To make best use of the strategic opportunities, China must take the road of peaceful development, which means to foster a peaceful international environment to develop our own country and, in turn, promote world peace with our development.

China will continue to advocate peace, development and cooperation, pursue the independent foreign policy of peace and build friendly relationships with all countries around the world on the basis of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence.

-China treats all countries as equals regardless of their size, wealth or strength;

-China makes independent judgments on the merits of each international issue and takes a position accordingly;

-China does not draw lines along ideology and social systems in handling its relations with other countries, or impose its values on others;

-China does not enter into alliance with any country or country group, and does not interfere in other countries' internal affairs or allow others to interfere in its own internal affairs;

-China opposes hegemonism and power politics and will never seek hegemony;

-China will continue to call for respect for the rights of countries to choose their own social systems and roads of development and advocate dialogues and exchanges between different civilizations.