The world's most populous nation will not repeat the track of the United States in economic take-off: China will largely ride on its own energy and resources to this end, a prestigious Chinese theorist has claimed.

China differs from the United States, who pursued its industrialization and modernization at the sacrifice of worldwide resources, Vice-President Li Junru of the Party School of the Chinese Communist Party (CPC) Central Committee said Thursday in an interview with Xinhua.

Roughly 1.5 billion people in the Western countries have enjoyed the fruits of modernization since the European industrial revolution was kicked off more than two centuries ago.

In comparison, the People's Republic of China, now with a population of 1.3 billion, plans to build itself into an industrialized and modernized nation in the middle of this century -- one century after it was founded.

Li called it both a "marvellous thing and extremely arduous task". "None of the US presidents, German chancellors, British prime ministers and French presidents has ever administered a country with 1.3-1.5 billion people."

He acknowledged that China's largest contribution to the world is to handle its own affairs well and that the country has no time and need to overextend itself to other countries.

"The 'Chinese Dream' (of industrialization and modernization) was unlike that of the Europe, which was materialized by means of establishing colonies and invading other nations."

China will neither seize resources by mobilizing a World War, as did German and Japan, nor produce Cold War confrontations, like the former Soviet Union, Li said.

Over the past two decades and more, China's gross domestic product (GDP) quadrupled on the back of doubled energy consumption, 94 percent of which was supplied by the country itself.

China is projected to quadruple its GDP again by doubling its energy consumption in the next two decades and vows to supply no less than 80 percent of the needed energy by itself.

Coal is expected to account for more than half of China's energy in need, followed by oil -- 20 percent.

Li acknowledged that China is now challenged by lack of energy, ecological deterioration and imbalance between economic and social development.

But he said if China fails to tide over these challenges, it could face political turmoil or public disorder that would exert disastrous influence on the world as a whole. As the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping put it, hundreds of millions of refugees would flood into other countries.

Instead, if China succeeds in peaceful development, it will provide the world a market with 1.3-1.5 billion people, Li said.

Source: Xinhua