Foreign news

Full text of Xi Jinping’s 2021 New Year address

Published

4 years ago

December 31, 2020

Comrades, friends, ladies and gentlemen, greetings to you all!

The year 2021 is arriving. From China’s capital Beijing, I extend my New Year wishes to you all!

2020 was an extraordinary year. Facing the sudden coronavirus pandemic, we put people and their lives first to interpret the great love among humans. With solidarity and resilience, we wrote the epic of our fight against the pandemic.

During the days when we addressed the hardships together, we saw the heroic spirit of marching straight to the frontlines, holding posts with tenacity, taking responsibility to get through thick and thin, sacrifices with bravery, and touching moments of helping each other.

From medical workers to the people’s army, from scientific researchers to community workers, from volunteers to those who built the projects, from seniors to youths born after the 1990s and 2000s, numerous people fulfilled their missions at the cost of their lives and protected humanity with sincere love.

They pooled their drops of strength into tremendous power and built an iron wall to safeguard lives. Many figures marched ahead without hesitation, many relays were accomplished hand in hand, many scenes showed touching moments, all these vividly illustrate the great spirit of fighting against the pandemic.

Greatness is forged in the ordinary. Heroes come from the people. Every person is remarkable!

Our sympathy goes to all the unfortunate ones infected with the coronavirus! We salute all the ordinary heroes!

I am proud of our great motherland and people, as well as the unyielding national spirit. Only in hard times can courage and perseverance be manifested. Only after polishing can a piece of jade be finer. We overcame the impact of the pandemic, and made great achievements in coordinating prevention and control and in economic and social development.

The 13th Five-Year Plan has been accomplished in full. The 14th Five-Year Plan is being comprehensively formulated. We are accelerating the pace to set up a new pattern for development, and are deeply implementing high-quality development.

China is the first major economy worldwide to achieve positive growth, and its GDP in 2020 is expected to step up to a new level of 100 trillion yuan. China has seen a good harvest in grain production for 17 years in a row. China has seen breakthroughs in scientific explorations like the Tianwen-1 (Mars mission), Chang’e-5 (lunar probe), and Fendouzhe (deep-sea manned submersible). Construction of the Hainan Free Trade Port is proceeding with vigor.

We also defeated severe flooding. With the military and civilians heedless of danger and difficulty, and standing in unity, we managed to minimize the damage of the floods.

I inspected 13 provincial-level regions and was glad to see people carefully implementing coronavirus prevention and control measures, racing against time to resume work and production, and sparing no efforts to advance innovation.

Everywhere were vibrant scenes of confident, resilient people making the most of every minute. In 2020, China made the historic achievement of establishing a moderately prosperous society in all respects and achieved decisive success in eradicating extreme poverty.

We launched the final assault on the fortress of entrenched rural poverty, and cracked this “hardest nut.”

Through 8 years, under the current standard, China has eradicated extreme poverty for the nearly 100 million rural people affected, and all the 832 impoverished counties have shaken off poverty.

These years, I have visited 14 contiguous areas of dire poverty. The unremitting efforts of the folks and the wholehearted contribution of the poverty-eradication cadres often come to my mind.

We still need to stay tenacious like a bamboo deeply rooted in the rocks, keep our feet on the ground, and work hard to paint a magnificent picture of rural vitalization, and steadily march ahead towards the goal of common prosperity.

This year, we celebrated the 40th anniversary of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, among others, and 30 years of the development and opening-up of Pudong in Shanghai. As I stood on the southern coast as the spring tide surged and on the colorful bank of the Huangpu River, my mind was filled with a myriad of thoughts.

Pilot trials have become models and leading forces, and explorations to innovate have become leading forces of innovation. The opening-up and reform has created miracles of development. In the future, we should further deepen reform and expand opening-up with greater courage, and create more “Stories of Spring.”

We are not alone on the Great Way and the whole world is one family. After a year of hardship, we can understand more than ever the significance of a community with a shared future for mankind.

I had many phone calls with friends from the international community, both old and new, and attended many “cloud conferences.” What we discussed most was staying united to combat the pandemic.

We still have a long way to go in pandemic prevention and control. People from all over the world should join hands and support each other to early dispel the gloom of the pandemic and strive for a better “Earth home.”

2021 will see the 100th birthday of the Communist Party of China. Its 100-year journey surges forward with great momentum. Its original aspiration remains even firmer one hundred years later.

From Shikumen in Shanghai to the South Lake in Jiaxing City, the small red boat (where the first CPC congress concluded) bore the great trust of the people and the hope of the nation. The boat has sailed through turbulent rivers and treacherous shoals, and has voyaged across violent tidal waves, becoming a great ship that navigates China’s stable and long-term development.

The CPC bears its eternal great cause in mind, and the centenary only ushers in the prime of life. We adhere to putting people at the center, stay true to our original aspiration, keep our mission well in mind, break the waves and sail out for our journey ahead, and we will certainly realize the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.

At the historic crossroad of the “Two Centenary Goals,” the new journey of comprehensively building a modern socialist country is about to start. The road ahead is long; striving is the only way forward. We have strived, broken through brambles and thorns, and crossed ten thousand rivers and thousands of mountains.

We will continue to strive, march ahead with courage, and create brighter glory! At just this moment, the festive lanterns have been lit, and family members gather for reunion. The New Year is coming. I wish our land to be splendid, our country to be prosperous, and our people to live in peace. I wish you all a harmonious, smooth and auspicious year, full of happiness!

Thank you!

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Foreign news

French Envoy Seeks Collaboration With NAN To Boost Seamless Relationship

Published

1 month ago

February 5, 2025

The Gleamer

The new French envoy to Nigeria, Marc Fonbaustier, on Wednesday called for collaboration with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) toward strengthening the mutually beneficial relationship between the two countries.

Fonbaustier, who is the French ambassador to Nigeria and the ECOWAS, made the call when he paid a courtesy visit to Malam Ali Muhammad Ali, NAN’s Managing Director, in Abuja.
The ambassador said that his purpose of visiting was to pay tribute to the MD, and to seek collaboration in three areas with a view to promoting stronger, seamless and fruitful partnership between both countries.

He added that Nigeria and its people were hospitable, especially to the foreigners and ambassadors alike.

He added that Nigeria was a country with so much energy, strength, stamina and so many talents.

In Nigeria, with the population of this size, it is inevitable that the elites of the country are very outstanding, “and there may be a Franco/Nigeria moments now”, he jokes.

According to him, France and Nigeria can collaborate more and learn from each other.
“I could feel it particularly during the state visit of President Bola Tinubu which took place in November 2024.

“I was there and I could see the intensity, the strength and the scope of the partnership, and I am here to scale up that partnership in all sectors.

“I am coming here for three reasons, first, to pay a tribute to the NAN MD and his team for the quality of this agency. We can testify that the contents that you publish are very factual, and also very well set up and structured.

“You do fact checking and you really do try to provide the community with quality information. I think, as a French ambassador, I can recognise that as part of a living democracy,” he said.

The French ambassador said the second reason for the visit was to intimate the NAN MD of France’s eagerness to go on partnership with NAN saying he hoped for assurance of a seamless, fluid and easy relationship.

He said that his third reason stemmed from his observation that NAN recently signed some partnership framework agreements with Egypt and China, saying “it may be time to think of balancing this partnership with others”.

“Especially with French, and to talk with Agence France-Presse (AFP) to see if there’s ground for a closer relationship between NAN and AFP.

“Which is also a recognised agency like yours, and I bet you the sky will be the limit to the collaboration, ’’he said.

Responding, the NAN MD informed the envoy that the agency was African’s biggest news content provider on account of its size.

Ali gave the envoy a little details of the agency’s operation and its outreach, saying “as our continent’s biggest news content provider, we have offices nationwide and in selected African countries.

“We have offices in countries such as South Africa, Cote d’ivoire, Addis Ababa, and then we have offices also beyond the shores of Africa. We have in New York and we are the only resident wire service in the United Nations.

“At a time in the past, the agency had 11 foreign offices, including Moscow, and presently, we are trying to re-open some of our shut offices, especially in London.
“We value partnership and understanding that we have with similar news organisation such as Reuters and, incidentally, we have a long standing relationship with AFP which you just raised.
“I know for years we have exchange of news between NAN and AFP but it’s a cooperation that we will like to strengthen and with your greater involvement,’’ he said.

The MD commended the ambassador for reaching out and engaging with some Nigerians communities to douse the tension of the allegation made by the Nigeriens.

He also lauded the envoy’s leadership and visibility to Nigeria and the ECOWAS, “which has helped to douse the perception and misconceptions about France, especially in the Sahel”.
“I think you have helped to reverse some of this perceptions. I thank you for the kind words that you said about the agency and about our management.

“We also see partnership as an important tool in checking the spread of fake news.
“We’ve seen instances where fake news has done great deal of damage, and with the coming of social media it has done even greater damage.

“Our country is facing a lot of challenges, one of which is the increasing insecurity, and the social media has been used by those who do not want to see our country to prosper,” Ali said.
He further said that NAN was a credible news agency that always fact check to correct the wrong narratives by those who are in the business of causing troubles.

He also told the envoy that the agency has its content in the Nigerian indigenous languages, starting with Hausa and it would proceed to Yoruba and Igbo languages later, “then later in future to French.

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