BEIJING, June 29 -- Foreign experts and scholars have highly commented on Chinese President Xi Jinping's keynote speech delivered Saturday at a commemoration marking the 60th anniversary of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence guiding international relations.
Ramesh Chopra, an Indian strategic analyst, said a six-point proposal put forward by Xi in his speech has significant meaning and will serve as the guidelines for world peace and development, as well as promotion of India-China relations for mutual benefits.
The proposal completely conforms with India's stance on equality of sovereignty of all nations, its non-alignment policy, and common security in international affairs.
"Both countries should make a concerted effort to build on their historical, traditional and cultural civilization links," he said.
U Win Ting, editor-in-chief of Myanmar ruling party's newspaper Union Daily, said Myanmar, China and India have shared a common pursuit in building a nice cooperative and win-win world.
Countries should not only coexist peacefully, but should also, more significantly, enrich the connotation and spirit of the Five Principles, to realize peaceful development, cooperation and an all-win outcome, and to enable the Five Principles to shine eternally and continue playing a positive role, he said.
Daw Yi Yi Oo, deputy director of the Myanmar Foreign Ministry's Department of Strategic Policy Studies, said the Five Principles, jointly initiated by Myanmar, China and India, have been universally recognized by the international community and become a set of basic principles guiding state-to-state relations.
Xi's proposal for carrying forward the Five Principles is of great significance to boosting peace and development, she added.
Joseph Matthews, director of International Cooperation Department at the Asia Euro University in Phnom Penh, said the concept of the Five Principles could be seen as the foundation of bilateral relations, not only between China and India, but also between China and more than 170 other countries around the world that have relations with China.
"China's policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries has won the hearts and minds of third world and developing countries around the globe, and especially in sub-Sahara Africa and South America, where most of the poor countries are located," he said.
Chheang Vannarith, a senior researcher of the Cambodian Institute for Cooperation and Peace, said the Five Principles are the foundation of international relations.
He said Chinese approaches to international conflicts are guided by these principles, and the outcomes of such foreign policy can only be tested in a long run as China is gradually becoming a global power.
"China needs to develop and strengthen its soft power," Vannarith said. "The Five Principles of Peaceful Co-existence can serve that goal well."
Chen Gang, a researcher from the East Asian Institute of National University of Singapore, said that the Five Principles have guided China's foreign policy and have made China's diplomacy uniquely exemplary in the whole world.
The Five Principles have won recognition by Third World nations as well as by the United Nations, he said. They are by no means outdated.
Ayman Okeil, general director of Egypt's Maat Foundation for Peace, Development and Human Rights, said that China has adhered to the Five Principles in coping with international relations.
"We never heard that China violated the sovereignty of another country, interfered in another country's internal affairs or anything of the kind. So, we can say that China is committed to some extent to these coexistence principles," he said.
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