Mankind Community of Shared Destiny and Common Interests Outlook

By LiangZhoumin and Yao Qiaohua



Mankind Community of Shared Destiny and Common Interests Outlook

By LiangZhoumin and Yao Qiaohua

Research Center of Socialism Theory System with the Chinese Characteristics in Henan Province

Common interests is the objective foundation and the main impetus of occurrence and development of international cooperation and international exchanges, construction of a humankind community of shared destiny must do well with "common interests", strengthen the interests factors, shape mutual willingness to reach consensus on cooperation, and work together to achieve mutual benefits and win-win outcome.

Comrade Xi Jinping on a series of international occasions puts forward an important initiative to build the mankind community of shared destiny, and provides to the international community the "China’s strategy", a Chinese thinking on human development, which has become the important banner of leading the Chinese development towards the outside world. China has also made numerous fruitful efforts for the implementation of this conception. How to ensure this concept to take root and blossom is a major theoretical and practical issue worth exploring.

Integrated Interests: conforming to the development logic

The humankind society is a natural community of shared interests. Nation-state is the product of coordinated interests, so the international system composed of nation states shows similar struggles within state. All state actors’ main body has a clear-cut boundary, independent state power, and specific national interests, requests to put the national interests as the highest principle, and seeks to maximize the state interests and is for absolutely national security in international exchanges. History and reality have shown that as every state actor bases on the identical mission and unswervingly moves toward the optimized goal, in the international community a contradiction, conflict, trial of strength and even war acts are likely to emerge. In the course of fierce battles, the human society has gradually recognized that the one-sided pursuit of personality, the excessive expansion of self-interests and other states seen as object and target for conquest and plunder, etc. are not the best choice of mankind. The human society is a natural community of shared interests, an individual object must learn to compromise, tolerate and choose the proper way of acts, and seek symbiosis, co-existence and common development with other state objects. The concept to construct mankind community of shared destiny put forward by comrade Xi Jinping is consistent with and docked with the internal requirement of human's society development, and provides the right direction for interactions in the current international community and harmonious development of the world.

The common interests accumulate and fuse the power of the world. As early as in 1848, Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto write, "Through the exploitation of the world-market, a cosmopolitan character is given to production and consumption in every country. ... In place of the old wants, satisfied by the productions of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in the intellectual production." This is more than 160 years ago that the ancient sages showed their insight that as the economic globalization develops it will generate huge integrated kinetic energy. Up to the development of the era today, information, and transport become more convenient, economic globalization and marketization have greater energy, so that all countries, be it big or small, and strong or weak, and regardless of their locations, be it in the North or the South, and the East or the West, all get involved in the high tide of globalization. Firmly grasping the pulse of the times and the development trend, Comrade Xi Jinping timely points out that in today's world, interconnection and interdependence is the megatrend. With the fast flow of the goods, capital, information and talents, etc. whether nearby neighbors or far away countries, whether they are large or small, developed countries or developing countries, are increasingly form a community of shared interests and community of shared destiny featuring integrated interests and common security. In view of this, to put forward the construction of mankind community of shared destiny conforms to the inevitable requirement of the era development, in line with the internal logic of history development, and is reasonable path for mankind to march to new development.

Common challenges and external threats make human society face the common fate. Current human society is faced with a growing number of global problems, the traditional security threat represented by military threat has not been able to eliminate the demon, while the non-traditional security threat marked by "9/11" terrorist attacks get intensified, rampant terrorism, ecological environmental degradation, drug trafficking and transnational crimes and other problems emerge endlessly. The outstanding characteristic of non-traditional security issue is transnational, the proliferating destructive disaster of non-traditional security makes it unnecessary for countries to rise together, but it is inevitable for countries to fall together. One bloody scene after another reminds us that solving human security dilemma cannot be dealt with by anyone country alone. The human society needs firmer solidarity than anytime in the previous history for problems shooting, and should pay more attention to the cooperation among countries.

Win-win cooperation: arouse enthusiasm for all parties

Common interests are the life source of community. As early as in the Western Han dynasty in China, historian Sima Qian in his Records of Historian, pointed out that it is bustling under the Heaven as everyone comes for interests while prosperous under the Heaven as everyone goes for benefits. After one thousand years, grasping the historical materialism, Marx profoundly points out what people strive for are all related to their interests. Looking back at the modern times, mankind consciously or unconsciously formed various communities of different sizes in different regions in political, economic, cultural and even military fields and others. The reason for their establishment and development is that people come to realize the common interests that cannot be separated from each other; these communities can show alive and vitality, because the common interests get growth and expansion under the care and nurture by various sides. The common interests incubate cooperation possibilities for an actor to adjust its actions in order to adapt to actions of other actors, and is the objective basis and strong driving force for community of shared destiny to have life and vitality. Therefore, in the process of building mankind community of shared destiny, comrade Xi Jinping on many occasions uses for many times the community of shared interests to straighten out the relationship between China and other countries and regions, and emphasizes the reciprocal principles of developing the common interests of all parties in a community. In practice, China upholds the outlook on common interests, and builds a community of shared interests with common pursuit and collective sharing.

Adhere to the development concept of win-win cooperation. According to the historical materialism, win-win cooperation is firstly reflected in the economic field. Engels believed that every social economic relationship is first expressed in interests. It is only in the basic way of people producing material means of substance and the economic interests decisive in the process that promotion of cooperation among nations can be found. The initial purpose for the Western developed countries to launch globalization movement was looking for new markets for their surplus products, and higher profits for the surplus capital. But at the expense of other countries’ interests, one-sided pursuit of self-satisfied and narrow interests has been proved not only unreasonable and inhumane as well as unsustainable and non-lasting. Today, whether enthusiasm and desire of countries around the world can be stimulated for the construction of mankind community of shared destiny and maximizing the participation of people in the construction process still depends on the expected benefits by these countries to participate in this process. Construction of mankind community of shared destiny should be based on the basic principle of win-win cooperation, and should forge the interests of the whole world beyond individual national interests and ensure various countries in the world the tangible and huge benefits and interests for their involvement, and then together form consensus and take action to build mankind community of shared destiny, while the Belt and Road initiative and practice are the concrete actions to build the community of shared destiny. Of course, the concept of win-win cooperation can be applied to the economic field, but also widely to political, security, cultural and other fields.

Adhere to the construction guidance of mutual benefits. International relations studies have revealed that the interdependence among nation states creates the common interests and generates the initial intention of cooperation with each other, however, the real cooperation will not be realized because of this, cooperation will emerge only when actors based on mutual interests adjust their policies accordingly. Robert Keohane, an international relations theory researcher believes that as a policy of country's government is seen by other countries’ governments to promote their own goals, cooperation between these governments will happen. Therefore, whether countries can carry out proper and sincere as well as mutually beneficial and reciprocal policies will become the key determinants for seeding and rooting the community. China has played a leading role in following mutual benefit and reciprocity. On September 28, 2015, Comrade Xi Jinping in his important speech to the 70th UN General Assembly points out that it is genuine development if all countries develop together; adhere to the spirit of opening up, and promote mutual help and mutual benefits. The Belt and Road Initiative as a strategic vision concretely embodies the mankind community of shared destiny, its starting point and goal are based on the building of common interests, any unbiased person will respond to it with positive evaluations.

Enhancing trust and dispelling misgivings: promoting common action

Vigorously building the common interests and removing the cooperation suspicions and obstacles. The concept of the mankind community of shared destiny clearly points the direction and paints the blueprint for the development and progress of human society. But this blueprint unfolding and painting are facing a complex situation, which is restricted and checked by multiple factors, for example, much or little benefits, strong or weak interdependence, dependence on each other to gain strength, smooth or rough communication, degree of mutual benefits and reciprocity, compared national strength, number of participating bodies and institutions of the community, etc. The history that human beings seek cooperation shows that common interests do not easily turn to a cooperation action. Therefore, to seek common interests and build a community particularly need sincere cooperation and unity in the same boat. In the process of constructing mankind community of shared destiny, starting from the interests various countries are concerned with, we must be enhancing trust and dispelling misgivings, removing obstacles, building consensus, working together and seeking common development.

Vigorously developing the common interests, and dissolving the inertial interruption of the old order. To advocate building mankind community of shared destiny, the core of which is the equality among nations, mutual respect and win-win cooperation, the essence of which is to reshape an international order of harmonious development. The reality of international relations, however, is that imperial ambitions, hegemonism and power politics, and the cold war mentality under the pattern of the old order, the military adventurism, new interventionism, national xenophobia, and protectionism and isolationism in trade and economic relations in the new period are deep-rooted and intricate; exclusive alliance blocs against the third party still have quite big market; clash of civilizations and discrimination are not new; the life and death zero-sum game, and the cold war mentality of power politics still strongly dominate the international order. To dissolve the attempts of the old order to resist, obstruct and eve strangle the new order, an effective way is to strengthen the common interests through trade, investment, cooperation, and opening-up, bring traditional conservatives see the consequences of the zero-sum game, and even seriously damaged interests, and sense tangible benefits generated by working together, in order to consciously engage in the practice of constructing a mankind community of shared destiny .

Vigorously developing the common interests, and upgrading cooperation initiative. In the international community where the common interests exist, because of the imbalanced strength, and asymmetry interdependence, national received-benefits is not necessarily reciprocal. Therefore, to build the mankind community of shared destiny, comrade Xi Jinping repeatedly emphasizes that we must uphold the concept of fairness and justice, carry out the principle of mutual benefits and reciprocity, pursue win-win cooperation, take care of reasonable concerns of other countries while stressing the national interests, promote the common development of all countries in pursuing national development, establish a more equal and balanced new partnerships, work together, and share both rights and responsibilities. That is the original intention of the proposed mankind community of shared destiny, and also China's action connotation of building this community.

(Abridged translation of the article from www.gmw.cn on October 2, 2016)