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2021-04-02 10:53

On Apr.2nd, H.E.Chinese Ambassador Yu Hong’s articles were published in the 《Borneo Bulletin》 and the Chinese medias, giving a comprehensive introduction to China’s NPC and CPPCC sessions, the 14th Five-Year Plan, China’s achievements in social development, vaccine cooperation and China Brunei cooperation. The contents are as follows:

In the first half of March, the 4th Session of the 13th National People’s Congress and the 4th Session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (the Two Sessions) were successfully held in China. At the year of the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, the Two Sessions this year deliberated and approved the Report on the Work of the Government, the Outline of the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025) for National Economic and Social Development and the Long-Range Objectives Through the Year 2035, and the Decision of the National People’s Congress on Improving the Electoral System of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and other important documents, sending a strong signal that China is committed to improving the development quality, realizing common prosperity for its people, and collaborating with countries in the world to achieve win-win cooperation and common development.

Over the past five years, China has scored new achievements in economic and social development. The economy performed stably overall, and its structure was continuously improved. GDP increased from less than 70 trillion yuan to over 100 trillion yuan. Much was accomplished toward making China a country of innovators, with major advances in manned spaceflight, lunar exploration, deep-sea engineering, supercomputing, quantum information, and other areas. With its entire rural poor population, 55.75 million in number, lifted out of poverty, the daunting task China set itselves to eliminate absolute poverty has been successfully accomplished. Pollution prevention and control efforts were intensified, resources and energy were used more efficiently, and there was a notable improvement in the environment. China continued to open its door wider to the world, the joint pursuit of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) yielded solid outcomes. The living standards of our people rose significantly. Over 60 million urban jobs were added, and the world’s largest social security system was established.

Thanks to the Chinese people’s hard work in these five years, China accomplished the major goals and tasks of the 13th Five-Year Plan. Especially in 2020, facing the severe combined impact of a sudden coronavirus epidemic and a deep global economic recession, the Chinese people, under the strong leadership of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China with Party Secretary Xi Jinping at its core, responded with tremendous tenacity. We achieved major strategic success in our response to Covid-19 and China was the world’s only major economy to achieve growth. Meanwhile, China upheld multilateralism and endeavored to build a human community with a shared future, making important contributions to advancing global peace and development. We supported global cooperation on combating Covid-19, has carried out the largest emergency humanitarian action since the founding of the People's Republic of China, and has worked in real earnest to improve vaccine accessibility and affordability in developing countries. We have undertaken to provide an initial 10 million doses vaccines under COVAX for emergency use in developing countries. So far, we have donated or is donating Covid vaccines to 80 countries including Brunei, and is exporting to 47 countries.

Starting this year, China will implement its 14th Five-Year Plan and embark on a new journey of building a modern socialist country.

China will stay true to the new development philosophy and strive to achieve higher-quality development that is more efficient, equitable, sustainable, and secure.

China will pursue innovation-driven development and accelerate the modernization of the industrial system. We will continue to prioritize the development of the real economy, upgrade the industrial base and modernize industrial chains. We will remove impediments to the rational flow of production factors along all links of production, allocation, distribution and consumption, and work to build a strong domestic market and turn China into a trader of quality, thereby promoting positive interplay between domestic and international circulation, fostering a new development pattern.

China will prioritize the development of agriculture and rural areas, and advance rural revitalization across the board. We will move faster to grant permanent urban residency to people who move to cities from rural areas, and will continue to pursue new strategy of people-centered urbanization. We will continue to implement the major regional development strategies as well as the strategies for coordinated regional development and functional zoning, so as to create regional economic structures and a territorial space system that will sustain high-quality development, so as to promote coordinated regional development.

China will advance reform and opening up across the board, develop a high-standard socialist market economy, and foster a world-class business environment. We will promote the high-quality development of the Belt and Road cooperation, and build a globally oriented network of high-standard free trade zones. We will deepen multilateral, bilateral, and regional economic cooperation and continue to uphold the multilateral trading regime. We will work for the early entry into force and implementation of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement, the signing of the China-EU Comprehensive Agreement on Investment, accelerating free trade negotiations with Japan and the Republic of Korea, and actively considering joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. China will promote the growth of mutually beneficial China-US business relations on the basis of equality and mutual respect.

China will draw up an action plan for carbon emissions to peak by 2030 and ensure that China meets the targets for its intended nationally determined contributions in response to climate change by 2030. We will expedite the transition of China’s growth model to one of green development, and promote both high-quality economic growth and high-standard environmental protection. Energy consumption per unit of GDP and carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP will be reduced by 13.5 percent and 18 percent, respectively.

China will continue to improve people's well-being. We will implement the employment-first strategy, build a high-quality education system, make all-round efforts to build a Healthy China, and improve the multi-tiered social security system. We will also improve public cultural services, and modern systems for cultural industries.

China will ensure both development and security, and usher in a new stage in building a peaceful China.

China and Brunei have a long history of friendship. Over the past five years, great strides have been made in China-Brunei cooperation, and the bilateral relations are in the best period of history. During Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Brunei in 2018, bilateral relations were upgraded to Strategic Cooperative Partnership. H.M. Sultan Haji Hassanal Bolkiah visited China in 2017 and 2019, and attended the 2nd Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation. Heads of state of both countries have charted the development course for bilateral relations from a strategic perspective. In January 2021, H.E. Mr. Wang Yi, State Councilor and Foreign Minister of China, paid a successful visit to Brunei, further consolidating mutual trust. China-Brunei cooperation on the BRI has been increasingly deepened, bilateral economic and trade volume has increased from US$719 million in 2016 to US$1.91 billion in 2020. In particular, bilateral cooperation grew against all the odds in 2020, with trade volume up by 72.5%, China's imports from Brunei up by a remarkable 217.1%, both rates ranking first among ASEAN countries. China’s investment in Brunei covers a multiutde of areas, which have not only helped expand downstream oil and gas industries, improve port operation efficiency, and increase employment of Brunei, but also brought new methods of digital epidemic responses, strongly bolstering Brunei’s efforts in achieving economic diversification, digital Brunei, and healthy Brunei. As the people-to-people exchanges between two countries continue to deepen, so does the mutual understanding. Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 epidemic, our two countries have shown great sympathy and support to each other, and carried out effective cooperation in epidemic responses. When the vaccination programs were being rolled out around the world, with most faced with severe vaccine shortages, China donated vaccines to Brunei despite its own strong domestic demand, which fully reflects the solidarity and profound friendship between China and Brunei in sharing weal and woe.

This year marks the 30th anniversaries of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Brunei as well as the ASEAN-China dialogue relations and Brunei assumes the rotating chair of ASEAN. The China-Brunei relations are now at a new starting point of history. Both countries are committed to improving the people’s livelihood and overall economic development, to win-win cooperation and regional peace, stability and prosperity. Looking ahead to the next five years or even further, the friendly exchanges and mutually-beneficial cooperation between our two sides enjoy broad prospects and huge potential. China stands ready to work with Brunei, on the basis of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit, taking the opportunity of the "Double 30" celebrations, to promote the synergies between China’s 2035 Long-Range Objectives and Wawasan Brunei 2035, and to develop high-quality BRI cooperation between our two countries, in order to constatnly scale the bilateral Strategic Cooperative Partnership and the China-ASEAN relations to new heights.

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