China's rise contributes to world civilization

Updated: 2013-01-14 20:50

(chinadaily.com.cn)

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China's rise should not be simply taken as economic growth, but as progress of civilization in many fields of politics, science, economy and culture, says an article of People's Daily. Excerpts:

US scholar John King Fairbank said as early as the middle of the last century that Chinese people's ability to survive may be much more superior to people in the United States.

Years later, an article in Time magazine anxiously pointed out that the most worrisome thing for them is China's influence on the world remaining unclear and the world going through fundamental changes without them having an idea of it at all.

These words are quite representative and allow us to clearly see that Westerners' single-line outlook on civilization has become a burden for the West to know China. China's ruse has challenged the Western civilization's dominance. But the world is by no means a boxing ring for different civilizations.

The long history of human civilization suggests any kind of civilization's birth and development happens in intensive interaction with the other civilizations. No civilization develops in a secluded and isolated environment.

The evolutionary history of world civilization is not so simple that one civilization declines and will be replaced by another emerging one. China's more than 30 years' of reform and open-up is just a process of drawing lessons and learning from other countries. The openness of Chinese civilization ensures that China learns everything useful for its quick economic growth.

China is now not content with learning. China is confidently showing the world a unique development path that comes from the world but best fits China's practical national conditions. This is the other important contribution of China's development to the world.

A number of countries are also developing quickly together with China. The collective rise of different powers indicates the world is entering a multi-polar era. The decline of the United States' hegemony is a necessary result of the multi-polarization process but not China's rise.

Becoming the second largest economy, China is still very far from challenging the US' hegemony. China is anti-hegemony in the past and in the future. But it is not China's mission to terminate the US' hegemony.