Hardly revolutionary sentiments, one might think. But in China, which has traditionally shunned multilateralism for fear of being bullied over such issues as security in the South China Sea and human rights, they mark an important shift.
China has embarked on a determined drive to sell a new foreign policy in which it asserts itself regionally while pursuing its goals more vigorously through international forums. Previously, it preferred to deal with sensitive issues bilaterally. In the post-Deng Xiaoping era, Beijing may at last be fashioning a more activist, coherent, and outward-looking foreign policy to match its growing economic importance.
Chinas rulers have been beating the drum of the new foreign policy for much of the past year. The relatively successful Hong Kong handover and a warming of Sino-US ties have encouraged an increased assertiveness. So have the economic problems afflicting the Asian tigers. State media coverage of meetings between Jiang Zemin, Chinas president, and heads of the financially troubled Association of South-east Asian Nations (Asean) last month depicted a benign godfather dispensing advice to errant schoolchildren.
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Such are the contradictions between old and new perspectives that Chinese policy remains skittish and has not yet settled into an predictable pattern. Suspicions about the ulterior motives of outsiders are deeply rooted in a country that shunned contact with the world until relatively recently. The propaganda machine continues to warn of US hegemonistic ambitions even as Mr Jiang seeks ways to advance a constructive strategic partnership with Bill Clinton, his US counterpart.
But there are enough indications of change to persuade China-watchers that Beijing has embarked, albeit tentatively, on a new trajectory. It is a path, say optimists, that could allow it to improve often fractious relations with its neighbours and with the west.
China has undergone a very significant reorientation, says Professor Samuel Kim, senior research scholar at the East Asia Institute, Columbia University. Beijing is veering away from its pretensions of being a global (but isolated) power, towards pursuing its goals by forging relations with its immediate neighbours. Mr Jiangs presence last month at the first summit between leaders of Asean and of the regions economic powers - Japan, China and South Korea - is part of what Prof Kim describes as the substantial regionalisation of Chinas foreign policy.
Since China opened to the outside world in the late 1970s, Chinese policy has undergone a number of twists and turns. This began with a starry-eyed Sino-US romance during which Mr Deng declared that the US and China, in their opposition to the Soviet Union, had identical global interests. But a decade later the Tiananmen square massacre frayed what had become a threadbare perception of Sino-US togetherness. Then the collapse of the Soviet Union forced an overdue review of Chinas place in the world.
That review produced a basic conclusion that if China could achieve great power stature in the Asia Pacific region - where the US, China, Russia and Japan rub up against each other - it would in due course become a great power globally. Chinese officials have begun to articulate with greater clarity foreign policy priorities, including what is described as a new beginning in Sino-US relations.
Since the cold war is over and the world moves towards multipolarity we stand for a new type of state-to-state relationship, says Chen Jian, an assistant foreign minister and one of the architects of Beijings Asia strategy. This is characterised by mutual respect and mutual co-operation. These words more or less reflect sentiments expressed by Mr Jiang in a speech to the Communist party congress last September in which he observed that big-power relationships were undergoing major and profound adjustments. China sees itself as integral to those changes.
Kenneth Lieberthal, a China scholar and adviser to the US, says it is unclear whether Beijings desire to forge a coherent foreign policy is merely an attempt to counter American influence, or if China genuinely believes this to be the best way of ordering its international relations. Similarly, Chinas participation in the Asean regional forum on security, reversing past objection to such multilateral forums, invites the question of whether this is a cynical exercise to stifle discussion about territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Chinese officials insist their interest in dialogue is genuine.
What is clear is that the new leadership in Beijing has, since Mr Dengs death last February, gone on the offensive diplomatically. Since the Hong Kong handover on July 1, Chinese officials have engaged in what Prof Lieberthal describes as high diplomacy. This has included summits with the US and Russia; high-level exchanges with Japan; involvement in meetings of the Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) forum and Asean; participation in efforts to bail out sinking Asian economies; and a lead role in promoting Geneva peace talks on Korea. All this generally constructive activity contrasts sharply with the crisis of early 1996 when Chinas firing of missiles into waters off Taiwan prompted widespread censure and the deployment of two US naval carriers. They are seeking to establish a high profile as an important country with whom you can get along and one interested primarily in economic development, says Prof Lieberthal. But he has yet to discern a clearcut global strategy. Jiang Zemin is trying on major country clothes to see how they fit.
In the process, China is, somewhat uncertainly, trying to come to grips with its status as an aspiring great power or, as Prof Kim describes it, an incomplete great power - but through regional engagement rather than splendid isolation.
The irony is that the west has begun to sing the rise of China chorus at a time when Chinese leaders are shifting from the pretence of being a global power to becoming the dominant regional military power in Asia, says Prof Kim.
From Beijings post-cold war perspective, Asia is the centre of Chinese power and influence, the nucleus of ever-expanding circles radiating outwards in all directions. This is an idea we are likely to hear much more of as China continues to spread its wings. It may even become policy.
Such are the contradictions between old and new perspectives that Chinese policy remains skittish and has not yet settled into an predictable pattern.
Beijing is forging a new, more open, foreign policy based on regional engagement, says Tony Walker.