BEIJING, Aug. 27 (Xinhua) -- "Asia is our common home," Chinese President Xi Jinping wrote in a signed article published by Vietnam's Nhan Dan newspaper in 2023 ahead of a visit to the country. "Building a community with a shared future for humanity should start from Asia."
That vision has found concrete expression in China's neighborhood diplomacy. In April last year, Xi convened a central conference on work related to neighboring countries in Beijing, where building a community with a shared future with neighboring countries was identified as a priority.
To advance that goal, the conference underscored the need for China to work with its neighbors to consolidate strategic mutual trust, support regional countries in pursuing development paths suited to their respective conditions, and properly manage differences.
Days later, Xi embarked on a tour of Southeast Asia that took him to Vietnam, Malaysia and Cambodia, during which he elaborated on how China seeks to put that vision into practice. During the visit, China and the three countries signed a record 108 cooperation agreements, covering traditional infrastructure, connectivity and emerging sectors such as the digital economy.
China, Xi said, would "extend the benefits of Chinese modernization to its neighbors, promote the building of a community with a shared future with neighboring countries, and work together to advance modernization in Asia."
Over the years, the vision has been translated into an expanding web of bilateral and regional cooperation. China has reached common understandings on building communities with a shared future with 17 neighboring countries. At the subregional level, China and the five Mekong countries have agreed to build a Lancang-Mekong community with a shared future, while China and the five Central Asian nations have committed to building a China-Central Asia community with a shared future.
Improved connectivity has laid a solid foundation for closer ties. "If the Belt and Road are likened to the two wings of a soaring Asia, then connectivity represents its arteries and veins," Xi once said. China has signed Belt and Road cooperation documents with 25 neighboring states across Asia, while a connectivity network encompassing "six corridors, six routes, and multiple countries and ports" is now largely in place. Roads, railways, ports and trade routes are bringing markets and communities closer together.
Xi's vision of a shared future goes beyond regional connectivity; it envisions countries of different sizes and with different national conditions coexisting, cooperating and pursuing shared development on the basis of equality and mutual benefit.
China's own modernization has enabled its neighbors to achieve technological advances and industrial upgrading through collaboration, said Wirun Phichaiwongphakdee, director of the Thailand-China Research Center of the Belt and Road Initiative.
Xi's neighborhood vision is being translated into reality through concrete projects, helping make Asia a platform for cooperation and shared prosperity, he added.
As Xi once put it metaphorically, "Countries across Asia are like individual lamps. Only when they are connected can they illuminate the night sky of Asia in all its brilliance."■
