On 12 August, Chinese Ambassador to Zimbabwe Zhou Ding published a signed article titled “New Blueprint creates more opportunities for China-Zimbabwe Cooperation”on the Herald. The full text is as follows:
On 18 July, the Third Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China adopted a resolution on further comprehensively deepening reform to advance Chinese modernization, drawing up a new blueprint that will guide China’s reform and opening-up in the years to come. The reform tasks stipulated in this resolution are to be completed by 2029. This landmark event conveys a clear message: China’s endeavors in reform and opening-up will never cease.
China will further deepen reform comprehensively. Thanks to reform and opening-up, China has achieved rapid economic growth and long-term social progress over the past 46 years and contributed over 30% to global growth in recent years. In the first half of 2024, China’s economy grew by 5%, and the country reported a record high in trade value of goods with a growth rate of 6.1%, indicating a steady economic rebound and reaffirming its role as a crucial engine for global economic growth. The output of smart and green products such as integrated circuits, service robots, new energy vehicles, and solar panels also grew at a double-digit rate, solidifying their role as new growth drivers. Now, China is at a critical stage for transforming its growth model and optimizing its economic structure. To cope with complex development challenges both domestically and internationally and meet the new expectations of the people, reforms should be more targeted, comprehensive, and problem-oriented. That’s why over 300 specific reform measures have been rolled out in this plenum. It is foreseeable that China’s economy will gain stronger momentum from the new reforms.
China will pursue high-standard opening-up. China remains steadfastly committed to the policy of opening-up. The plenum explicitly conveys a signal to the world regarding China’s commitment to expanding high-standard opening-up by proposing concrete measures. We will further shorten the negative list for foreign investment and remove all market access restrictions in the manufacturing sector. We will steadily expand institutional opening-up, and create a high-standard business environment that is transparent, stable, and predictable in alignment with international economic and trade rules. China’s unwavering effort to expand opening-up is in line with the interests of both China and the world, creating greater opportunities and boosting confidence for the entire world amid the global economic downturn and rising economic protectionism. As President Xi Jinping has repeatedly emphasized that “China’s door of opening-up will not be closed and will only open even wider”, China’s door to Zimbabwe will also open wider.
China will continue to advance the Chinese path to modernization. The overall objectives of further deepening reform are to continuously improve and develop the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics. Chinese modernization has been continuously advanced through reform and opening-up, and it will undoubtedly embrace broader horizons through further reform and opening-up. Chinese modernization is the modernization of peaceful development and aims to achieve common prosperity, pursuing its own development while insisting on safeguarding world peace and development. It is people-centered, serves the interests of the vast majority of the people and pursues both material and cultural-ethical advancement. Chinese modernization shatters the myth that “modernization is westernization”. As a true friend of Zimbabwe, China fully supports the independent choice of the Zimbabwean people for their modernization path that suits their national conditions and is willing to share experiences with Zimbabwe to boost its industrialization and modernization.
Bilateral cooperation will gain broader space. China and Zimbabwe share same visions and goals in terms of modernizing our own countries. We supported each other and marched side by side. China and Zimbabwe need to explore broader cooperation space to achieve high-quality development jointly. China will intensify cooperation with Zimbabwe under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the Global Development Initiative (GDI), the Global Security Initiative (GSI), and the Global Civilization Initiative (GCI), and actively engage in the reform of global economic governance to safeguard the common interests of developing countries along with the Global South. Now, the New Parliament Building, the Robert Gabriel Mugabe International Airport and the Hwange Power Station Unit 7&8 and many other projects supported by China have become landmarks of Zimbabwe. Chinese investments have become the vital force to promote Zimbabwe’s economic development. Our bilateral trade volume has reached a record high in 2023. China encourages more well-established Chinese companies to invest in Zimbabwe, and respond to the mantra “open to business” and “building Zimbabwe brick by brick, stone upon stone” proposed by H.E. President E.D. Mnangagwa. China welcomes more Zimbabwean agricultural products to export to China, more Zimbabwean talents to study in China and encourages more bilateral people-to-people exchanges in culture, sports, arts etc.
New opportunities are around the corner. This September, H.E. President Mnangagwa will attend the 2024 Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) in Beijing. This is the first gathering of the China-Africa family in Beijing since the 2018 FOCAC summit, and will be the fourth time that the FOCAC meeting is held in the form of a summit. It will be an event to celebrate China-Africa friendship, explore cooperation and chart the course for the future under the theme of “Joining Hands to Advance Modernization and Build a High-Level China-Africa Community with a Shared Future”. The forum will hold a series of important activities. With the joint effort of China and Africa, I believe that the 2024 FOCAC Summit will be a great success, open up new vistas for China-Africa relationship and write a new chapter of building a China-Africa community with a shared future. Also, the upcoming Summit will no doubt infuse vitality into the China-Zimbabwe relationship that has endured for over 4 decades and forge a fresh start for bilateral pragmatic cooperation in various sectors.