Nigeria Times

By He Yin, People’s Daily

All sides must assume their responsibilities for history and the people, keep to the right direction, and work together to build a community with a shared future for humanity, said Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Xi made the remarks in a video address at the opening ceremony of the 60th anniversary celebrations of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) on June 12.

He stressed that all sides need to foster an international environment for peaceful development, follow the trend toward open development, and harness the historic opportunity for innovation-driven development.

What he said fully demonstrated the emphasis that China lays on global development and the country’s strong support for the common development of the Global South.

The world today is undergoing faster changes unseen in a century. Peace and development is confronted with new challenges. At the same time, the aspiration for peace, development, and cooperation of people from all countries has become even stronger.

Since its inception, the UNCTAD has been making voices for developing countries, vigorously advancing South-South cooperation, advocating North-South dialogue, and promoting a new international economic order.

In Xi’s video address, he elaborated on China’s advocacy for an equal and orderly multipolar world and a universally beneficial and inclusive economic globalization. This is conducive to promoting global common development and prosperity.

Fostering an international environment for peaceful development is a necessary prerequisite for achieving global development.

History has proved that only by adhering to peaceful development and win-win cooperation can the world achieve long-term stability and universal prosperity.

Standing at a crossroads where the world must choose between unilateralism and multilateralism, and between lose-lose and win-win, China has always stayed committed to its original aspiration of forging ahead hand in hand with fellow developing countries.

China holds that all countries, major ones in particular, should pursue true multilateralism, advocate an equal and orderly multipolar world, abide by the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, and support a more effective role of UNCTAD and other multilateral agencies.

UNCTAD Secretary-General Rebeca Grynspan said that multilateralism is the antidote to challenges such as trade protectionism, and she appreciates China’s support for multilateralism and South-South cooperation.

Following the trend toward open development is the only way to achieve global progress.

Economic globalization, like rivers converging into the sea, is an inevitable course of history. The problems associated with economic globalization can only be resolved through its continued development; unilateral actions and protectionism will only backfire.

China believes the world should advocate a universally beneficial and inclusive economic globalization, promote trade and investment liberalization and facilitation, properly resolve development imbalance and other issues, and make the global governance system more just and equitable.

As UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres stated, “We must channel the courage and wisdom of those who built UNCTAD, to reimagine a world where trade is a force for shared prosperity — not geopolitical rivalry. Where global supply chains are source of green innovation and climate action — not environmental damage”.

Harnessing the historic opportunity for innovation-driven development is an inevitable choice to achieve global development.

The ongoing new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation, led by digital technology and artificial intelligence (AI), is cultivating new quality productive forces and bringing new development opportunities to countries, particularly developing ones.

It is important to build an open, inclusive and non-discriminatory environment for the digital economy, follow the people-centered, AI-for-good principle and strengthen AI-related rules and governance within the framework of the United Nations, actively advance green transition, and help developing countries join the trend of digital, smart and green development.

It is necessary to adhere to innovation-driven development, strengthen cooperation in areas such as new industrialization and AI, accelerate the development of new quality productive forces, and provide all people with a future full of opportunities.

China will always be a member of the Global South and the developing world. It has always been taking actions to promote global development.

China has proposed the Belt and Road Initiative, Global Development Initiative, Global Security Initiative, and Global Civilizations Initiative, with the aim of assisting global modernization and achieving shared prosperity.

While pursuing its own development, China also helps other developing countries accelerate their development. Through high-quality development, China is comprehensively advancing Chinese modernization, which will undoubtedly bring new and greater opportunities to global development.

In 2023, China’s total import and export of goods reached $5.94 trillion, with outbound investment of $147.85 billion, contributing 32 percent to global economic growth. China will continue to be the largest engine driving global economic growth.

Development concerns the well-being of all humanity. All parties should bear in mind the future and well-being of mankind, pursue peaceful, open and innovation-driven development, build international consensus on development, and foster new growth drivers for global development.

China is ready to work with all parties to help implement the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, ensure that more development gains will be shared more fairly by people across the world, and usher in a bright future of peace, security, prosperity and progress for the world.

By Wang Zhou, People’s Daily

In recent years, autonomous driving scenarios have become increasingly common in Beijing, the capital of China, especially in the Beijing High-Level Autonomous Driving Demonstration Zone located in the city’s Economic-Technological Development Area, or Beijing E-town.

If you go to E-town from the Beijing Daxing International Airport, autonomous cabs are at your service. If you are on a visit to the Beijing Municipal Administrative Center, you can take self-driving buses for a tour. The streets of the city, which are spick-and-span every morning, are also cleaned by autopilot sanitation vehicles at midnight.

In the Beijing High-Level Autonomous Driving Demonstration Zone, more than 800 autonomous driving vehicles manufactured by 29 automakers have obtained the approval for road testing. The testing mileage of these vehicles has totaled nearly 30 million kilometers.

Such achievements are inseparable from the National Innovation Center of Intelligent and Connected Vehicles (CICV) located in E-town.

At the Taiheqiao base of the CICV, People’s Daily journalists boarded a test vehicle. A safety supervisor in the driver’s seat took his hands off the steering wheel, and then the vehicle performed a series of tasks including accelerating, decelerating, turning, overtaking and lane changing.

The ride was impressively smooth and the vehicle surprisingly intelligent. Even when some of the traffic markings on parts of the road were blurred, the vehicle could still operate “by the book”; when a pedestrian suddenly appeared on the zebra crossing in front of the vehicle, the vehicle didn’t “panic,” but decelerated smoothly after its laser radar detected the pedestrian.

“To develop intelligent and connected vehicles, we need to integrate vehicles, roads, big data and cloud computing technologies into one system, so that we can better achieve intelligent mobility. This is the integrated vehicle-road-cloud solution we have been exploring,” said Zheng Jihu, executive vice director of the CICV.

On the test roads for autonomous driving in E-town, when traffic congestion happens at an intersection 500 meters ahead, intelligent traffic light poles will quickly upload relevant information to the cloud. The cloud then transmits this to intelligent connected vehicles, telling them to promptly find a smoother route.

The demonstration zone is equipped with roadside sensors, intelligent traffic signal control systems, and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication systems. It enables comprehensive connectivity between vehicles and road infrastructure, as well as vehicle-to-vehicle connectivity, facilitated by laser radars, millimeter-wave radars, and AI cameras.

“Through the deep integration of vehicles, road infrastructure, and cloud computing platforms, we effectively solve the problems of information asymmetry and lack of coordination in traditional traffic systems, significantly improving the safety, efficiency, and comfort of the transportation system,” said Zheng.

At the end of February this year, under the guidance of the CICV, a demonstration route for the application of intelligent and connected vehicles was opened, connecting the Baodi Station of the Beijing-Tangshan Intercity Railway and the Beijing-Tianjin Zhongguancun Tech Town. The 11.3 km road has a designed maximum speed of 70 km/h, with a one-way trip taking only 18 minutes at the fastest.

The demonstration route adopts a vehicle-road-cloud integrated solution, which enables intelligent and connected buses running on it to respond promptly to emergencies, detect pedestrians and vehicles, automatically decelerate to avoid collisions, and automatically stop at stations, said Tang Fengmin, an executive of the CICV.

According to Tang, one-way travel time has been reduced by 47 percent. This provides support for subsequent expansion and connection to more application scenarios.

Currently, the CICV is equipped with 22 professional laboratories and a trial production center. These laboratories are able to test whether an autonomous driving vehicle is able to “see” and “hear.”

In an in-the-loop laboratory of the CICV, a newly launched self-driving car appears stationary but has already “driven” tens of thousands of kilometers during several months of testing.

A test vehicle on a vehicle test bed is similar to a person running on a treadmill wearing a virtual reality headset, as simulated road environments are shown on a large screen.

Tests that would take two to three weeks on real roads can be compressed into just one to two days on the test bed. The CICV has collected over 1 million real-world scenarios nationwide, allowing test vehicles to adapt to all situations.

Unlike traditional vehicles, which primarily focus on real-world road testing for their dynamic performance, testing for intelligent and connected vehicles is mainly done through digital modeling. This requires a rich scenario library to enable the testing and verification of algorithms for driving perception, decision planning, and intelligent control.

The CICV has established a leading domestic scenario database for intelligent and connected vehicles, a virtual vehicle and human-machine interaction testing environment, and a wireless communication testing environment for complete vehicles. This can support full-scenario testing and application services from virtual simulation to real vehicle verification during the entire vehicle development process, potentially saving 70 percent of research and development costs for enterprises.

Utilizing the platforms it has built, the CICV is actively promoting and formulating relevant standard systems.

“Information security and communication security are prerequisites for the application of intelligent and connected vehicles, but there has always been a lack of unified standards and clear norms. The CICV has released a series of standards, providing a basis and direction for the information security testing of our products,” said Xiao Ping, product manager of truck business at Pony.ai, a Chinese autonomous vehicle technology company.

In recent years, the CICV has released more than 20 standards to facilitate the construction of an integrated vehicle-road-cloud standard system.

By Liu Shi’an, Huang Xiaohui, People’s Daily

A humanoid robot developed by a company in the Zhangjiang AI Robot Valley, Shanghai has gained new capabilities. Apart from walking rapidly and avoiding obstacles, it is now able to wave its two robotic arms freely, recognize different scenes and learn. The robot may perform many professions in the future.

“Previously, such technological upgrades would take at least three to five years. Now, with the training by AI large models, the robot has upgraded in just half a year,” said Gu Jie, founder of Fourier Intelligence, the developer of the humanoid robot.

According to Gu, the rehabilitation robots developed by the company have been commissioned in more than 2,000 medical institutions.

Speaking of the changes in Zhangjiang, Gu, who has been running a business there many years, said: “More and more multinational companies and innovative companies are settling in Zhangjiang, making it easy for us to seek all kinds of talent, upstream and downstream companies, and application scenarios.”

In recent years, Shanghai, strengthening its efforts to build itself into a source of technological innovation, has followed a development pattern driven by both technological innovation and institutional innovation, accelerated its stride toward becoming a globally influential science and technology innovation center, and achieved a significant leap in its comprehensive scientific and technological strength as well as overall innovation efficiency.

Shanghai has made a series of major scientific and technological breakthroughs in domestically-produced large aircraft, domestically-built cruise ships, deep space exploration, and deep-sea endeavors. It has also achieved many “firsts” in somatic cell monkey cloning and single chromosome eukaryotic cells.

Shanghai continues to lead the nation with a high-value invention patent ownership of 50.2 per 10,000 people. The framework of building Shanghai into an international science and technology innovation center has basically been done, and Shanghai is now accelerating efforts to strengthen its functions.

The construction of upgrades of the Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility (SSRF), a key sci-tech infrastructure to reveal the mysteries of the microscopic world passed the national inspection and acceptance in Shanghai on May 15. which will greatly improve the experimental research capabilities of the light source.

“The SSRF is like a ‘scientific research aircraft carrier’, bringing together a group of top scholars and outstanding teams from home and abroad. At present, we are intensively conducting preliminary research on next-generation light source facilities to pursue brighter and stronger light beams,” said Zhao Zhentang, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and director of the SSRF.

Shanghai has consolidated its foundations and built platforms to become a source of innovation. The city’s R&D investment intensity has increased from 3.4 percent in 2014 to 4.4 percent in 2023. Focusing on fields such as photonics, life sciences, and artificial intelligence, Shanghai is accelerating the construction of clusters of major scientific and technological infrastructure. Twenty relevant facilities have been built, are under construction, or are planned. Besides, Shanghai is home to more than 80 high-end national scientific research platforms.

The driving force comes from reform. Focusing on the key links concerning innovation entities such as universities, research institutes, enterprises, new R&D institutions, and scientific and technological talents, Shanghai issued and implemented 18 measures for streamlining administration and delegating powers to push forward in-depth reforms of the sci-tech system, and further stimulate the innovative vitality of the society.

“The new measures have given greater motivation to scientific researchers, and the long-term stable investment mechanism allows researchers to settle down and make long-term commitments,” said Zeng Xiaoqin, dean of the Office of Research Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

A good innovation ecosystem attracts talents from all directions. Currently, more than 800,000 professionals work in Shanghai’s three leading industries: integrated circuit, biomedicine, and artificial intelligence.

In 2023, the three industries reported total output of 1.6 trillion yuan ($220.54 billion), and that of strategic emerging industries accounted for 43.9 percent of the total output of industries with annual revenue of 20 million yuan or more from their main business operations.

At present, Shanghai has more than 500 innovation and entrepreneurship carriers, which are incubating nearly 30,000 enterprises and teams. Besides, the city is home to more than 24,000 high-tech enterprises. There is one listed company per square kilometer in Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park.

Chen Jining, secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China, noted that Shanghai will strengthen its efforts to build itself into a source of scientific and technological innovation. It will unswervingly pursue new quality productive forces and core competitiveness through scientific and technological innovation, and strive to achieve new breakthroughs in the construction of a globally influential science and technology innovation center.

By Wang Junling

Recently, leading Chinese companies in the large model sector, including ByteDance, Baidu, Alibaba Cloud and Zhipu AI, have announced significant reductions in the prices of their generative artificial intelligence (AI) large models and related services.

Many of these companies have lowered their prices by more than 50 percent, and some products have even seen price reductions exceeding 90 percent.

“I often encounter problems when programming, and at such times, large models are a great source of inspiration. The price reduction of large models offers people with more choices and lowers the threshold for usage, thus significantly improving work and learning efficiency,” said Feng Yepeng, a computer science student at a university in Beijing.

Luo Yiran, who works in network operations in Wuhan, central China’s Hubei province, said that the user experience of domestic large models has been continuously improving in recent years, meeting her practical needs such as seeking inspiration for planning and collecting background information.

In her opinion, it is a positive trend to reduce prices in a timely manner as application scenarios continue to expand.

In participating in this “price reduction trend”, large model service providers have their own considerations.

Some hope to explore more application scenarios.

Shen Dou, executive vice president of Baidu and chief of Baidu AI Cloud Group, said that the development of AI needs support from new development paradigms and new technological tools. By reducing the price of certain products and making some core large models free, Baidu is minimizing the cost of trial and error in its innovation, Shen explained.

“Price is just one factor that consumers consider when choosing large models. Compared to price, they consider the models’ effectiveness, application scenarios, and successful cases more important. Through price reductions, we hope to quickly explore and replicate more potential application scenarios for large models,” Shen said.

Besides, some companies hope to release market potential through price reductions.

Through its self-developed Tongyi AI model family, Alibaba Cloud has built a matrix of foundational models and industry-specific models. Senior expert Zhu Xunyao of Alibaba Cloud noted that the price reductions aim to make large models affordable for more ordinary users and small- and medium-sized enterprises, therefore accelerating the release of potential in the market of AI application.

Zhu said that for Alibaba Cloud, the cost for users to use large-scale models mainly lies in the computational resources consumed during model inference, which is significantly lower on the public cloud compared to private deployment.

“We have greatly reduced the cost of model inference based on a series of key technologies and products we have developed. The technological dividends, economies of scale, and cost advantages brought by the public cloud has boosted our confidence in lowering prices and seizing the market,” Zhu said.

Behind the price reductions lie the efforts and hopes of many large model providers and even internet companies to empower work and life with AI.

Zhang Peng, CEO of Zhipu AI, believes that the development of AI technology has entered a new stage. However, he said, there is still a significant gap between the improvement of the technology curve and enabling more people to benefit from the powerful productivity of AI. There is still much work to be done in effectively utilizing the capabilities of large models to help people in their work, learning, and daily lives, he added.

Wang Peng, associate researcher with the Institute of Management of the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, noted that with the continuous development and optimization of large model technology, the marginal time and resources required for model training are gradually decreasing.

In particular, algorithm improvements, computational efficiency enhancements, and declining hardware costs have made it possible to reduce the price of large models, Wang said.

From this perspective, the underlying reasons for the current wave of price reductions for large models in both domestic and international markets are generally similar. Major manufacturers aim to promote the popularization and application of AI technology through price reductions.

“On the one hand, price reductions make large model services more affordable, effectively expanding the market size and user base. On the other hand, significant price reductions in the short term will intensify market competition and prompt large model providers to continuously improve service quality to retain users,” Wang said.

Over time, inefficient or underfunded businesses may be eliminated, while distinctive but difficult-to-scale businesses may be merged, Wang added.

Experts generally believe that the large model industry needs to explore diverse application scenarios, focus on data quality and privacy protection, diversify revenue sources, and improve user feedback mechanisms, so as to achieve healthier and more sustainable development.

By Lin Zihan

Recently, a Chinese-made aircraft leased by Indonesia arrived in Jakarta. It marked China’s first cross-border leasing of a homegrown aircraft settled in offshore Chinese yuan.

As China reaches agreements with more trading partners and strengthens the use of local currencies in international trade and financial transactions, cross-border transactions between China and other countries are expected to enjoy greater convenience. This will provide new opportunities for the cooperation on bilateral and regional trade and investment.

Cai Qingfeng, a professor at the School of Economics, Xiamen University and deputy dean of the university’s Belt and Road Research Institute, said that the use of local currency settlement aligns with the growing trade between China and the relevant countries and regions, reflecting the increasing demand for trade.

“China has become a main trading partner of over 140 countries and regions, with its total trade in goods ranking first in the world. China has maintained the largest trading partner of ASEAN for years. It is also the largest trading partner of Africa and second largest of Latin America,” said Cai.

He said China has close economic and trade relations with major economies around the world, and its economy is deeply integrated into the global industrial, supply and value chains.

“This provides a broad range of application scenarios and practical demand for promoting local currency settlement,” said Cai.

China and relevant countries have achieved fruitful results in the bilateral local currency settlement arrangements.

In September 2021, the People’s Bank of China and Bank Indonesia announced the launching of a cooperation framework for promoting the use of local currencies for settlement of bilateral trade and direct investment between China and Indonesia.

This made Indonesia another Belt and Road partner country to establish a bilateral local currency settlement agreement with China, following Vietnam,Laos, Russia, and other six countries.

In early 2023, China and Brazil signed a memorandum of cooperation to phase in the yuan clearing arrangement in Brazil. Brazil announced that it would conduct bilateral trade settlement with China using a local currency.

In March 2023, Chinese and French companies completed the first cross-border yuan-settled trade of liquefied natural gas.

“Local currency settlement, driven by the demand for economic and trade exchanges, is a mutually beneficial choice that aligns with the interests of both parties,” said Zou Jingxian, associate professor at the National Academy of Development and Strategy, Renmin University of China.

China has close economic and trade ties with Belt and Road partner countries and other members of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, Zou said, adding that the demand for trade provides a solid foundation for promoting cooperation in local currency settlement between China and its foreign partners.

“Using local currency settlement can streamline the exchange process, reduce the economic and time costs of transactions, and provide convenience for cross-border trade. At the same time, local currency settlement helps avoid the exchange rate risks caused by fluctuations in the value of the U.S. dollar, thus reducing exchange losses and easing pressure on foreign exchange reserves,” said Cai.

“Using local currency settlement will encourage Brazilian companies to actively participate in the Chinese industrial chain, especially in areas such as electric vehicles, clean energy, biotechnology, and precision agriculture,” said Marcos Pires, director of the Institute of Economics and International Studies at Brazil’s Sao Paulo State University.

From a financial perspective, local currency settlement can generate a significant amount of Brazilian real and Chinese yuan capital, thus driving direct investment, Pires added.

According to data from the People’s Bank of China, China’s cross-border receipts and payments in Chinese yuan totaled 52.3 trillion yuan in 2023, growing 24.2 percent year on year.

In particular, cross-border yuan payments for trade in goods accounted for 25 percent of the total cross-border payments for trade in goods in both domestic and foreign currencies during the same period, an increase of 7 percentage points compared to 2022.

By the end of 2023, the coverage of the Cross-Border Interbank Payment System has expanded to 182 countries and regions worldwide.

Zou stated that the Chinese yuan enjoys strong international credibility. China’s comprehensive strength, responsible monetary policies, steady economic growth, and ample foreign exchange reserves, among other factors, serve as reassurances for other countries to accept and use the currency.

She further pointed out that for a currency to be widely used in settlement and clearing, an efficient payment system is indispensable. Currently, China is at the forefront globally in areas such as mobile payments and the use of digital currency.

Cai noted that promoting local currency settlement cooperation between China and other countries and regions benefits the diversification of the international monetary system, mitigating the negative impacts of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s monetary policies and exchange rate risks on global economic fundamentals.

“Local currency settlement cooperation between China and relevant countries and regions will further unleash global economy’s potential for trade and investment,” said Cai. He noted that promoting local currency settlement cooperation will continuously create favorable conditions for trade and investment between China and its Belt and Road partner countries. This will strengthen economic ties between China and relevant regions, and facilitate investment and trade within those regions.

By He Yin, People’s Daily

The Ukraine crisis has shown no sign of stopping and generated more spillovers. The conflict could further escalate. The pressing priority is to cool down the situation and accumulate conditions for ceasefire.

China did not create the Ukraine crisis, nor is it a party to the crisis. It has been working vigorously to facilitate talks for peace all along. China’s objective and just position, and its constructive role have been widely recognized by the international community.

China’s position on the Ukraine crisis has been consistent, which is to promote peace talks. Since the full escalation of the Ukraine crisis, Chinese President Xi Jinping has had in-depth exchanges with world leaders including Russian and Ukrainian leaders. He has put forward four key principles, four things that the international community should do together and three observations, which have become China’s fundamental approach to the political settlement of the crisis.

China has released a paper stating its position on the political settlement of the Ukraine crisis, in which it proposed 12 important principles including respecting the sovereignty of all countries, abandoning the Cold War mentality, ceasing hostilities, and resuming peace talks.

China has delivered to Ukraine many shipments of humanitarian aids, and sent its special representative many times to mediate among the countries concerned. Instead of being an onlooker, China has always held an objective and just position, playing an important role for peace.

The world needs to make more objective, balanced, positive, and constructive voices on the Ukraine crisis, and find the most extensive common ground for restoring peace.

China and Brazil recently jointly issued the “Common Understandings Between China and Brazil on Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis.” The two sides had an in-depth exchange of views on pushing for the political settlement of the Ukraine crisis and calling for the deescalation of the situation, and reached six common understandings.

They called on relevant parties to observe three principles for deescalating the situation, namely no expansion of the battlefield, no escalation of fighting, and no provocation by any party. They believe that dialogue and negotiation are the only viable solution to the Ukraine crisis. All parties should push for the deescalation of the situation, increase humanitarian assistance, oppose the use of nuclear weapons, oppose attacks on nuclear power plants, and protect the stability of global industrial and supply chains.

As of 12 June, 103 countries from five continents have responded positively to the “six common understandings” in different ways, of which 55 countries have confirmed their accession or are seriously studying the way of accession. Russia and Ukraine also affirmed most of the contents of these six common understandings.

This once again illustrates that these six common understandings meet the common expectations of the majority of countries. China believes that the more countries that support these six common understandings, the closer the day of the political settlement of the crisis will be, and the brighter the prospects for peace will become.

Dialogue and negotiation is the only viable way out for the Ukraine crisis. As the largest geopolitical conflict in Europe since World War II, the prolonged Ukraine crisis not only exacerbates the suffering of the people in both countries but also poses unpredictable risks and challenges to the region and the world, which are not in the interest of any party involved.

History has proven time and again that at the end of the day, conflicts can only be resolved through negotiation. All parties concerned should intensify diplomatic efforts for a ceasefire and put an end to the fighting in a responsible manner. Both sides of the crisis should be encouraged to engage in dialogue. The earlier the talks start, the sooner peace will arrive.

China has been the most firmly and actively committed to promoting peace talks on the Ukraine issue and will not give up as long as there is a glimmer of hope.

China encourages and supports all initiatives and efforts in the world that are conducive to easing the situation and achieving peace. China supports the holding in due course of an international peace conference that is recognized by both Russia and Ukraine and ensures the equal participation of all parties and fair discussions on all peace plans. China’s position on the peace conference is fair and just, driven by a genuine desire to promote the political settlement of the Ukraine crisis.

The Ukraine crisis has complex historical and practical causes. To resolve the crisis, it is necessary to address both the symptoms and the root causes, and to plan for the present as well as for the long term.

Ukraine’s sovereignty and security should be upheld, and Russia’s legitimate security concerns should also be respected. Europe’s peace and stability should be defended. The same goes for other countries.

The security of a country should not be pursued at the expense of others. The security of a region should not be achieved by strengthening or expanding military blocs. The legitimate security interests and concerns of all countries must be taken seriously and addressed properly.

Only by abandoning the Cold War mentality, promoting equal dialogue and negotiation among all parties, and addressing their legitimate concerns properly, can a balanced, effective, and sustainable European security architecture be built, and long-lasting peace and stability in the region achieved.

China opposes certain countries using the Ukraine crisis to shift blame, smear third parties, incite a “new Cold War,” and force other countries to take sides. This approach not only fails to resolve the current crisis politically but also risks repeating the mistakes of camp-based confrontation.

No matter how complex the situation is, parties must not give up dialogue and negotiation. No matter how acute the conflict is, political settlement must be pursued. All relevant parties should prioritize peace and humanitarian crisis, direct their resources and endeavors towards diplomatic efforts aimed at stopping the fighting, and jointly promote a political solution to the Ukraine crisis at an early date.

China will keep upholding an objective and just position, build consensus for ending conflicts, and pave the way for peace talks, so as to contribute Chinese wisdom to the political settlement of the Ukraine crisis.