October 24 this year is the United Nations Day, as well as the 60th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations (UN).

Sixty years ago, the UN was founded on the ruins of World War II and its purposes are to stabilize international relations and establish a more solid peace foundation, so as to free humankind from the threat of war.

Over the past 60 years, along with the changed situation on the international stage, the UN has experienced constant development and growth amidst various tests and challenges, growing into a big international family with its membership increasing from 51 in the early period of its founding to 191 at present, and has thus made important contribution to the world's peaceful development.

Compared with what it was like at the time of the founding of the UN, today's world has undergone tremendous changes. UN activities have gone far beyond maintenance of peace and solution to conflicts. The UN is not an international organization keeping itself aloof as various UN agencies are engaged in extremely extensive and meticulous work, they are closely associated with the lives of the people of various countries around the world.

So far, the UN has completed negotiations on solving over 170 regional conflicts and has deployed 60 peacekeeping troops and observation groups in conflicted regions worldwide, thereby restoring tranquility and making it possible for negotiations to be carried on and freeing tens of millions of people from the scourge of conflicts; through the International Atom Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN has adopted security measures for a hundred nuclear facilities in 70 countries and has signed 237 security agreements with 152 countries. Through 13 years of efforts by the World Health Organization (WHO), smallpox was thoroughly wiped out from the earth in 1980��

This data sheet can be extended. It indicates that with the UN, our planet of today has become more secure.

Sixty years have passed, major changes have taken place in the connotations of international security and peace, and the UN is also faced with new challenges. Poverty, disease, the deteriorating environment and other non-traditional security factors, in particular, are posing enormous threats to the international community and their seriousness is by no means inferior to terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

Just as Secretary-General Kofi Annan said at the meeting marking the 60th anniversary of the founding of the UN: This world body must give expression to this new age and should cope with various challenges of the times. As everybody knows, the biggest challenge is that hundreds of millions of helpless people in the world are suffering from the torment of hunger, disease and degeneration of the environment, although the world has no lack of the ability to rescue them.

To better cope with challenges, the UN Millennium Summit put forward the Millennium Development Goals in September 2000. The goals aimed to eliminate poverty, starvation, disease, illiteracy, the worsening environment and the discrimination against women embody humans' longing for a better life as well as their common conviction: Development is an important condition for realizing world peace, stability and prosperity.

To better cope with challenges, the United Nations still needs reform. Only through conducting reasonable and necessary reforms is it possible to create a powerful United Nations that can constantly promote common development. Strengthening the ability and authority of the UN through reforms is the only way leading to common security and common development of the international community.

As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, China abides by the purposes and principles of the "United Nations Charter", actively supports and participates in the UN work in various fields, and has been working unremittingly for the realization of the lofty objective of world peace and human progress. On the eve of the United Nations Day, the Chinese government presented to the UN a gift as a token of congratulations on its 60th birthday -- a bell symbolic of world harmony. Set out from Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, it was shipped to the UN Headquarters in New York City, USA. Materials for forging this bell include old artillery shells as well as discarded things picked up by students, which express the Chinese people's good wishes of opposing war and stressing environmental protection and pursuing a harmonious world, and the high hope placed by the Chinese people on the great trust undertaken by the UN for the preservation of world peace and promotion of common development.

This article by Ding Gang, senior editor of People's Daily Overseas Edition, is published on the front page of this newspaper, October 24 and translated by People's Daily Online