As President Hu Jintao points out, China and other emerging economies are contributing more to global development

Editor's note: Cooperation by the emerging economies will benefit themselves and contribute more to world peace and prosperity, a commentary of Xinhua News Agency says. The following is the full text.

Now is definitely not the best time in human history.

There is the aftermath of the international financial crisis, the fragile world economic recovery, the political unrest in West Asia and North Africa and the catastrophic multiple disaster in Japan, to name but a few tragic current events.

In such cloudy circumstances, the world is confronted with a series of daunting challenges. How can we maintain peace and stability? How do we sustain development? How do we realize common prosperity?

At this crucial time, China hosted last week a summit of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, a quintuplet of major emerging economies known as BRICS, and the annual meeting of the Boao Forum for Asia, a non-governmental and non-profit platform for discussions on key Asian and global affairs.

Speaking at the two occasions, Chinese President Hu Jintao shed significant light on the challenges and opportunities for Asia and the world, presented China's stance and charted the course ahead for lasting peace and prosperity.

A comprehensive assessment

As Hu noted at the two conferences, in the past decade, the world has experienced "major development, major changes and major adjustments".

While the trend of peace, development and cooperation gained stronger momentum and brought valuable development opportunities to all countries, regional and global problems stubbornly persisted, such as the North-South development imbalance, climate change and energy security among many others.

During the past 10 years, the gap between developed and emerging economies narrowed, and the international landscape moved closer to multi-polarity. Economic interdependency deepened, and the West-led global economic governance model cried for reform. Cooperation among developing countries boomed, and a multi-tiered package of cooperation mechanisms, such as the G20 and BRICS, came into being.

Meanwhile, as the impact of the recent financial mayhem lingered, world economic recovery remained haunted by uncertainties. Rich countries cranking up their money-printing presses only further complicated the picture, as did the continued political turbulence and warfare in some West Asian and North African countries.

All this indicates that both challenges and opportunities exist in the contemporary world and proper approaches are needed to tackle them. At such a challenging and potentially rewarding moment, China spelled out its strategic vision.

A constructive stance of China

In light of extensive and in-depth analysis, Hu unequivocally presented China's stance - to unswervingly defend peace and stability, promote common development, boost international exchanges and cooperation and strengthen the BRICS partnership.

"Peace and stability form the prerequisite and foundation for development," he said. It was the overarching responsibility of every national government and leader to maintain world peace and stability and ensure the well-being of its people.

The international community should seek peaceful settlement of international disputes, back multilateralism and international cooperation, respect the diversity of civilizations and pursue common progress.

Common development was the safeguard of long-term steady growth of the world economy. Under current circumstances, "the biggest imbalance in the world economy is the development imbalance between the North and the South and the most fundamental problem in the world economy is the inadequate development of developing countries," he said. In order to realize common development, the international community should put in place a fair and effective global development system, establish fair, just, inclusive and well-managed international monetary and financial systems, and set up a just and equitable international free trade system.