This past September, the Information Office of the State Council published a white paper on China's peaceful development. Meng Xiangqing, Deputy Director at the National Defense University's Strategic Studies Institute shares his thoughts as follows:

In the last 30 years, especially in the aftermath of the Beijing Olympic Games and global financial crisis, China's strategy has been increasingly scrutinized by the international community. It should be noted that China's strategic intention is not as complicated and mysterious as some suppose. China has neither secret goals nor veiled ambitions. Its strategic intentions are as simple as the headline of the white paper: peaceful development. This strategy will be maintained by generations of Chinese into the future.

China's overall goal of pursuing peaceful development promotes development and harmony domestically while pursuing cooperation and peace internationally. Specifically, this means that China will keep improving the domestic system to achieve a political civilization. Meanwhile, it will endeavor to improve people's material and social well-being and shoulder international responsibilities and obligations and mutually-beneficial cooperation with other countries.

After their long, bitter struggle with poverty, the most important strategic intention of the Chinese is to have a better life for themselves and help improve the life of other people around the world. We call this process "peaceful development," achieved through peaceful means. It shows the good faith and determination of the Communist Party of China (CPC) to include the commitment to achieving peaceful development in the report to the 17th CPC National Congress and China's 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-15) for economic and social development.

China stands firm against any violation on its core interests. The white paper points out, "It is therefore necessary and justified to modernize China's defense capabilities in order to uphold China's security and protect its peaceful development." Personally, I think the dream of peaceful development is hard to fulfill without national security. Modernization of defense capabilities and peaceful development are complementary to each other.

The fear that China will turn its economic strength into military force in order to dominate the world is unnecessary. China is committed to pursuing a defense policy which is defensive in nature. Adhering to this concept, China strengthens its national defense only for upholding state sovereignty and territorial integrity, and to safeguard the lives of its people. China will not engage in an arms race with any other country, and it will never engage in aggression or expansion, and never seek hegemony.

China has been asked to make its military affairs more transparent. But no country can keep its military affairs totally transparent. In recent decades, China has made its strategic intentions more transparent than several other major states. It has publicly declared that it will never seek hegemony, and will not be the first to use nuclear weapons. Nor will it use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear-weapon states or in nuclear-weapon-free zones. If every country can do the same, this will contribute greatly to world peace, stability and development.

The international community should welcome, not fear, China's pursuit of peaceful development.