China’s peaceful rise comprises the rise of peace, rise by peace and rise for peace. China needs long-term peace in the international environment for its economic and social development..

Since the early 1980s, China has been focusing its efforts on internal economic development in order to improve the living standards and educational levels of its people. China will continue to move forward in this way into the future. The mid-term purpose of China’s NDS is to quadruple the GDP of 2000 by 2020. The first two decades of the twenty-first century will be a period of important strategic opportunity for China. During this period, China will focus its attention on building a prosperous society.

The long-term purpose of China’s NDS is to make China a mid-level developed country, which will be strong, democratic, civilised and harmonious, by 2050. To achieve this objective, China will continue to pursue a policy of reform and opening up. The objective of China’s national security strategy is to defend its national interests of sovereignty, security and development, and to maintain a long-term peaceful and stable international security environment beneficial to China’s economic development. In order to achieve this objective, China will continue to follow the road of peaceful development, stick to the combination of development and security and strive for the enhancement of national strategic capability. China will also wield pluralistic means of security to deal with traditional and non-traditional security threats, and seek comprehensive national security of politics, economics, finance, the military and society. This means that China would like to continue its role as a responsible stakeholder in the international system.

China has been pursuing its independent foreign policy of peace since the mid 1980s. The objective of this policy is to strive for a peaceful international environment, which will be beneficial to China’s long-term economic and social development. In recent years, China has held that safeguarding security requires new concepts. Thus, China advocates the ‘new security concepts’, which regard mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality and coordination as their core. At the same time, the purpose of the new security concepts is to improve mutual trust through dialogue and to spur common security through cooperation. ^[3] Recently, China put forward the concept of establishing a harmonious world with lasting peace and universal prosperity. ^[4] China also stressed its intention to go along the road of peace, development and cooperation as a member of the international community.