Ringing in the New Year with Solidarity and Hope

With the arrival of the new year, there is only about one month to go before the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022 are staged. The incessant din created by some countries in politicizing the Games has not thwarted the worldwide passion in and support for the upcoming sports event. This can be seen by the recent declaration of the 10th Olympic Summit that firmly opposed the politicization of the Olympic Games and sports in general. Meanwhile, leaders and senior officials from many countries have also voiced their support for Beijing 2022 and the stance that the Olympics should not be politicized. China Today has received messages from former Prime Minister of Ireland Bertie Ahern and ambassadors of Greece, Malta, and Qatar to China, indicating their best wishes for the Winter Games and calling on the international community to carry on the Olympic spirit. Palpable solidarity is forming.

The year 2021 has been a milestone for both the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Chinese nation as a whole, according to the annual Central Economic Work Conference held in mid-December 2021. After declaring the completion of the country’s first centenary goal of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects at the celebration of its centennial, the CPC has led the country to embark on a new journey of realizing its second centenary goal of building China into a great modern socialist country. Despite the increasingly complicated and grim international environment and other unfavorable factors, China has maintained a global leading position in economic development and epidemic control while at the same time making progress in fields of science, industrial chain resilience, reform and opening-up, people’s livelihood, and ecological civilization, according to the conference. During the first three quarters of 2021, China’s GDP expanded 9.8 percent year on year, while its per capita disposable income stood at RMB 26,265, up 10.4 percent from the same period of 2020 in nominal terms. Meanwhile, China created 11.33 million new jobs in its urban areas during the first 10 months of 2021. All of this augurs a propitious start of the country’s new journey, instilling much hope for the new year.

The year 2021 also marked the 20th anniversary of China’s entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO) as the 143rd member. Having become the world’s largest trader in goods and the second-largest importer, the country is an important engine of the global economic growth. China’s total foreign trade expanded 22 percent year on year to RMB 35.39 trillion during the first 11 months of 2021, marking a 24-percent increase from the pre-epidemic level in 2019. The International Monetary Fund has predicted that China’s economy is likely to contribute about 18 percent of the global economy.

The world economy has benefited from China’s accession to the WTO, Pascal Lamy, a former WTO director-general, said in an interview with French daily Le Monde in December. “This entry has boosted global economic growth,” Lamy pointed out, and then added, “China modernized its economy through the import of capital goods and technologies, while consumers around the world have benefited from China’s low-price goods.”

Washington, however, just cannot relent its politicization of human rights. Apart from the so-called “summit for democracy,” under the pretext of “human rights” and unfounded reasons, the United States continues to contain China by imposing a series of economic and trade sanctions against it, including placing many Chinese institutions and companies on the “entity list” and passing a Xinjiang-related bill to ban imports from that region, all for the sole telling purpose of maintaining its hegemony in the world.

However, justice will finally prevail. According to the International Department of the CPC Central Committee, over 100 political parties, social organizations, and think tanks in Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe, and other regions have voiced their view that there is no system of democracy or pattern of development in existence that is applicable to all countries, calling for efforts to promote the building of a community with a shared future for mankind under the guidance of the shared human values. Solidarity on another front is being felt.