China's progress is of benefit to the world

A well-known Cambodian scholar said that China's progress has been contributing to developing global economy and tackling global issues such as poverty. In a recent interview with Xinhua, Chheang Vannarith, executive director of the Cambodian Institute for Cooperation and Peace and lecturer of Asia Pacific Studies at the Leeds University in Britain, said that China's efforts to realize national rejuvenation will contribute to the global economy and civilization. "China will have more capacity and resources to get involved in solving global issues such as poverty, climate change and natural disasters, and pandemic disease," he said. He noted that the challenges for the revival of China are both internally and externally driven. For the internal issues, China needs to seriously deal with good governance, inclusive growth, and environmental degradation, and for the external challenges, China needs to invest more in projects globally, especially in soft power. "Constructive partnerships with the United States and neighboring countries need to be strengthened and deepened based on mutual trust, confidence, common vision, and interest," he said. He said that the main difficulties of the current reform of China are how to readjust and transfer the development model from export orientation to a more balanced domestic demand and export driven economic development model. "To increase domestic demand is the key to the future of Chinese economy," he said, adding that to realize this, China needs to double the income for its citizens especially the working class, raise the minimum wage, and invest more in human capital ( research and development). He said the success of China's reform will inspire many other countries to learn from, and it will generate a new development model featuring a harmonization among state-market-people and development-environment-culture. Asking about China's opening up to the world, he said, in terms of trade, China has opened up for almost all sectors. But there are some constrains/limits in investment sector, so the future opening up of China will probably focus more on investment and the flow of capital. For China's concept that the international community is increasingly becoming a common destiny and it is necessary to establish a new more equal and balanced global partnership for development, Vannarith said that it is the correct path. It is not only the road to revival for China but for the world at large. He said such interconnected world deserves to be taken care of by all. It is the first time in the world history that the developing countries are emerging to come closer to the center stage and claim their equal partnership with the developed countries. "Thanks to China and other emerging economies such as India, Brazil, South Africa, and ASEAN, the global economic and strategic landscape is being shaped to be more equal world," he said. In regard to the new collective leadership of the Communist Party of China, he said that collective leadership is the key towards successfully realizing the road to revival of China. "With the population of 1.3 billion, China has so many talents. They can participate and contribute to driving China," he said.