The year 2005 is one when China's good-neighborly diplomacy produces great achievements.

At the diplomatic level, China and most of its neighboring countries exchange frequent senior-level visits. President Hu Jintao paid visits respectively to countries including Russia, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Republic of Korea and Vietnam. Premier Wen Jiabao visited India and some Southeast Asian countries while many state leaders in neighboring countries also paid visits to China.

At the trade and economic level, China's trade with neighboring countries exceeded $400 billion from January to October. China has become Japan and the ROK's largest trade partner and the second largest of the ASEAN. The China-Russia trade has topped $20 billion a year while the China-India trade is rapidly climbing toward $20 billion a year. The completion and opening of the China-Kazakhstan pipelines means the shaping up of a new situation of energy cooperation between China and Central Asia.

At the security level, China and neighboring countries such as Russia held joint military exercises leading to enhanced security mutual trust. In meeting non-traditional security challenges like the bird flu, tsunami in the Indian Ocean and earthquake in South Asia, China and its neighbors also launched unprecedented all-round cooperation. Moreover, in multilateral diplomatic areas involving neighboring countries such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit, East Asia Summit and the six-party talks, the guidelines of China's good-neighborly diplomacy were also fully demonstrated and gained broad acclaims from the international community.

China's good-neighborly diplomacy upholds three principles. Firstly, it includes all neighboring countries far and near, even those once cherishing old grudge, on the basis of burying the hatchet and inaugurating the future. The rapid development of the China-India relations is an embodiment of this principle.

Secondly, it seeks all-round development and mutual promotion of political, economic, cultural and security relations. In this regard the comprehensive advance of the China-ASEAN relations is exemplary.

Thirdly, it is based on the five principles of mutual respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in each other's internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit and peaceful coexistence, seeking mutual benefit and win-win result. As a matter of fact, the Five Principles of Peaceful Co-Existence were the diplomatic principles jointly put forward by China and neighboring countries such as India, Burma when New China was dealing with relationships with neighbors.

China's good-neighborly diplomatic thought inherits directly from the ancient Chinese concepts of peace like "peace being the best option", "harmonizing all states". It is also a consistent principle of the foreign policies of New China. After the end of the Cold War, as China's reform and opening up deepens and China's development keeps speeding up, to seek peace, development, cooperation and all-win result has become the consensus of many neighboring countries. China's diplomatic thoughts have completely new room for development. These are the basic background and sound foundation for China's good-neighborly diplomacy to achieve great results in 2005.

Diplomacy as an international behavior has always been two-way. That China's good-neighborly diplomacy can make plentiful and substantial achievements is also an inevitable result of the well-meaning interaction between China and neighboring countries. China actively implements good-neighborly diplomacy, helping neighbors regard China's "rise" no longer as a strategic threat. On the contrary most of them have established the new notion that China's rise is a strategic opportunity and responded positively to China's good-neighborly diplomacy, seeking to ride the "express" of China's rise, which in turn helped form the mainstream consensus of cooperation and all-win result in Asia-Pacific international relations. This has been further demonstrated at the East Asia Summit held at the yearend.

China cannot develop without the neighboring countries and their prosperity also needs a continually developing China. The two have formed a community which shares a common fate. China's development and that of neighbors boost each other, will jointly raise the status of Asia and make Asia the new political and economic center of the world. For China and its neighboring countries, this is a kind of mission and honor of participating in the "genesis". China will continue to stick to the diplomatic guideline of "building good-neighborly relationships and partnerships", sharing weal and woe. Together we create the new glory of Asia's rise.

The article written by Lin Limin, director of the Strategies Research Center of the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, and carried on the front page of People's Daily Overseas Edition, Dec.27, is translated by People's Daily Online