Chinese President Hu Jintao made a speech on China's new foreign policy of building a harmonious world at the United Nations Summit marking the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the world body. His words received wide approval and the policy is thought fruitful in 2005.

The policy helped to lift China's international status, fundamentally because of its pursuit of balance. That is, to balance national development against international responsibilities, economic benefits against political and security interests, relations with world powers against those with various countries, and reform against the maintenance of world order.

We should build a harmonious world by aiming at "performing great deeds". Although a developing country, China is a rising big nation. Change in international environment casts a direct impact on China's rise, and the country will suffer from its negative effects if she doesn't take the initiative to push it towards a more harmonious direction. Such a pro-active approach will benefit both the international environment of China and the advancement of the whole world.

In the spirit of "performing great deeds" China has decided to take responsibilities of a big nation. During his meeting with President Bush, President Hu said explicitly that the China-US cooperation will be on global scale. The year 2005 marks the most frequent Chinese participation in UN peacekeeping missions. At the UN Summit President Hu promised debt cut to the Third World, the biggest slash over years.

We should build a harmonious world by taking the overall national interest as a starting point. Both national and international interests are multi-faceted, and different interest claims can clash. For example, globalization can raise economic efficiency, but also worsen the wealth gap and interest conflicts at home and abroad.

In building a harmonious world, we must give equal attention to political, security and economic interests, and refrain from developing economy at the cost of political and security benefits. The enlarging world economic scale is fuelling conflicts in energy, resource, market, talent, international rules and so on. The WTO conference and anti-WTO demonstration serves a classic example. Clashes between developed and developing countries, transnationals and SMEs, the rich and the poor are being sharpened at each passing day. To build a harmonious world, we must, on top of economic interests, give due consideration to political interests such as China's image, influence and status on the international arena.

We should build a harmonious world by following the policy of a greater neighborhood diplomacy. To the end of a harmonious world we must maintain friendly ties with as many countries as possible, so we should avoid sacrificing relations with other countries for the sake of stable Sino-US ties.

The United States, as the world only superpower, comes into strategic interest conflicts with many a country in maintaining her world dominance. By frequent visits to Europe and Russia this year, Chinese leaders effectively raised the importance of China-EU and China-Russia ties so as to strike a balance in relations with the three parties of the United States, EU and Russia.

China also increased visits to other developing countries this year to achieve a relative balance between policies towards developed and developing countries. In regional policy, China worked hard to score a balance between neighbors and countries from other regions such as Latin America and Africa.

We should build a harmonious world in the principle of gradualness. In proposing such a long-term objective, China has no intention to reach it in one step. China fully understands the difficulty in constructing a harmonious world under anarchy, so she stressed on safeguarding UN authority and conducting necessary reforms.

To reshape the world order is a permanent task, and as time changes the old international order is for sure to be replaced by a new one. To ensure peace and order during such a course, China believes that reforms should be carried out in a measured, cautious way based on the current world order, so that the reforms can benefit the greatest majority of world countries.

This comment by Yan Xuetong, director of the Institute of International Studies, Tsinghua University, is carried on the front page of People's Daily Overseas Edition, Dec. 26, and is translated by People's Daily Online.