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China's Peaceful Rise - Speeches of Zheng Bijian, 1997-2005 Zheng Bijian (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2005)
At the end of 2003, the new Chinese leadership began to articulate the concept of China's "peaceful rise" publicly. On 26 December 2003, in commemoration of the 110th anniversary of Mao Zedong's birthday, Hu Jintao, General secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, stated that China had to "insist on following the development path of a peaceful rise" (Renmin Ribao (Beijing), 27 December 2003). About two weeks earlier, in a speech delivered at Harvard University, Premier Wen Jiabao elaborated on the concept as follows:
In expanding our opening up to the external world, we, at the same time, have to adequately and more self-consciously rely on our own institutional innovations; rely on our developing and expanding domestic market; rely on transforming the huge savings of the residents into investment; and rely on the raising of the nation's quality and the progress of science and technology to resolve our resources and environmental problems. The gist of China's development path of a peaceful rise lies in the above (Renmin Ribao [overseas edition], 12 December, 2003).
The concept "peaceful rise" soon attracted criticism. Those in favour of a strong military were not comfortable with too much emphasis on a "peaceful" foreign policy, especially when the military option remained regarding the Taiwan issue. Some critics argued that the word "rise" should be avoided. There was also speculation that Jiang Zemin was unhappy with Hu Jintao's eagerness to present the major foreign policy innovation to build his own political stature. By April 2004, the term "peaceful development" began to replace "peaceful rise" in the official discourse, though the latter's...