Chinese premier meets members of BFA board of directors
Beijing (Xinhua) — Chinese Premier Li Keqiang met with Ban Ki-moon, chairman of the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA), former Russian Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov, and Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, speaker of the House of Representatives of the Philippines and former Philippine president, in Boao, Hainan Province.
Li congratulated the BFA board of directors on its achievements last year.
He said the theme of this year’s BFA conference is “Shared Future, Concerted Action, Common Development,” which means countries should help each other, enhance communication, coordinate their actions, uphold inclusive rather than exclusive development, share achievements and realize win-win results.
Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, particularly after the reform and opening up drive in 1978, China has underscored huge economic and social development achievements, said Li, adding that China remains the world’s largest developing country and it still has a long way to go to comprehensively achieve modernization.
“China advocates maintaining multilateralism, respecting diversity of civilizations and allowing countries to explore their own development path according to their national conditions,” Li said.
The premier said China will continue to deepen reform and further open up, which will not only help China achieve its goal of modernization, but also contribute to global development and prosperity.
Speaker Arroyo described the discussion as “valuable” as it mainly covered the direction China is taking on its 40th year of reforms and its relationship with the rest of the world.
The meeting was one of the highlights of the BFA Annual Conference 2019.
Speaker Arroyo is on her second year as member of the Board of the BFA, which gathers together leaders in government, business and academic institutions throughout Asia to share their thoughts on the most pressing issues in the region and the world.
During the meeting, Speaker Arroyo cited China’s leadership in promoting what many refer to as “Globalization V.2” or the Belt and Road Initiative which aims to foster cooperation and development.
The speaker also expressed admiration for the current Chinese leadership’s implementation of Deng Xiaoping’s socialism with Chinese characteristics.
She noted that China’s remarkable growth particularly in the past two decades is showing the world that no development model can be applied universally and that the diversity of historical conditions determines the development paths that countries could choose.
“China has given us the lesson that there is just not one path for development because prior to China’s experience, it was thought that the only way to development is the Western style model of Jeffersonian democracy and coupled with a free market. But China has shown the world that you can have your own model of development using your own historical experience, especially China in the last 40 years.
“Since the opening of China 40 years ago, it has transformed itself, it is the world’s leading growth, unmatched in history. Four hundred million people were lifted out from poverty. China is on the verge of becoming the largest economy in the world,” she said.
