These days, I feel a sudden surge of warmth whenever I see on TV scenes of foreign rescuers and medical personnel battling for lives in China's quake zone and whenever I learn more countries donated huge sums of money and immense quantities of materials to us. Meanwhile, I also feel a kind of strength drawing China's distance to the world increasingly closer, and that is the force that has derived from the humanitarian spirit.
All natural calamities occurred in recent years, from the Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004 to Hurricane Katrina that wrecked the southern part of the United States in August 2005, and from massive quakes in Iran and Pakistan respectively in December 2003 and October 2005, to the tropical cyclone that ravaged Myanmar in early May this year, have continuously put humanity to the test. In such trials, humanitarianism has also been displayed and carried forward on the global scale and, like a strong tie, it links all the people on earth increasingly together.
In this ever-shrinking or dwindling "global village", the humanitarian spirit is no longer a "soft goal" of each household, but has much to do with the peaceful development, stability and safety of every nation. Particularly in battles against the natural elements, the foe of others is also yours, and the assistance to others simply means to help yourself.
The humanitarian spirit finds expression not only in actions taken by governments of individual nations but in deeds of ordinary people, who, without regard to their nationalities and skin colors, render a helping hand and assist others generously with money to demonstrate their loving care. Such a loving care soaks and nourishes the relationships between different nations and ethnicities, and produces a profound impact on the international relations and cooperation, and gives rise to the norms for common actions and the new, ethnical concepts.
The quake jolted Wenchuan county in southwestern Sichuan province has imbued the Chinese people with a loving care of the humanitarian spirit and enable them to feel how great and invaluable the loving care is at a time of adversity. When we extend our heartfelt gratitude to the loving care of the world, we need to ponder conscientiously what humanitarianism is meant to China, which is heading or "going" to the outside world, and to its citizens, who have turned still more self-confident and matured.
China today is still a developing nation in spite of its rapid growth over recent years, as it has a weak economic foundation with the average GDP still being listed only behind the 100th worldwide. People in quite a few areas of the country have just rid themselves of poverty and people in some of these areas are not yet better-off with a host of difficulties or problems to cope with. These difficulties, however, have not hindered us from holding high the great banner of humanitarianism, as we have come to know that the humanitarian spirit comes from the loving care at the bottom of our hearts and that there would be no development for China if there were no common progress of the humanity.
At the critical moment of relief operations for the Wenchuan quake victims, some netizen appealed for people in China, who were then bent on making donations for the quake victims, not to forget the people of Myanmar who have been ravaged by the tropical cyclone. A 50-member Chinese medical team rushed to Myanmar, bringing with them profound affections of the Chinese people for the victims in the tropical cyclone-hit region on the sixth day following the severe quake in Sichuan.
Meanwhile, at an ASEAN-UN international pledging conference in Myanmar's biggest city of Yangon on Sunday, or May 26, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi conveyed the decision of his government to provide another 10 million US dollars in emergency aid to Myanmar after offering a one-million-dollar-donation to the country. And China's humanitarian care has attracted the attention of the international community.
United Nations secretary general Ban Ki-moon spoke highly of China's active participation for Myanmar aid pledge. China rendered a helping hand when it suffered an extremely powerful quake itself, and this gives expression to its noble international humanitarianism, he commended.
Humanitarian aid brings loving care to the people of China, and also helps with the nation's development, which will naturally contribute still more to the common progress of the humankind. To attain this goal, we need all the more to concern ourselves with the peaceful development of this world, to help others still more generously to tide over their difficulties, and to offer more loving care to those countries when they are in need. This represents precisely the best reciprocation of the humanitarian aid we have received from the world.
By People's Daily Online, and its author is senior PD desk editor Ding Gang
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