Honourable Mr. Lim Swee Say, Minister of Prime Minister's Office,

Honourable Ms. Low Yen Ling and Mr. Sitoh Yih Pin, Members of Parliament,

Excellencies, Distinguished Guests,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Good evening! Welcome to the reception to celebrate the 64th Anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. This is my first National Day Reception since I assumed the post as the Chinese Ambassador to Singapore. I wish to express my thanks to Minister Lim Swee Say and all the distinguished guests for attending this reception out of your busy schedule.

I have been in Singapore for five months. Through the friendly exchanges with friends from all walks of life, I can deeply feel their focus and expectation on China's future development. As you all know, since the founding of the People's Republic of China, especially since the reform and opening-up policy 30-odd years ago, the Chinese government and people have explored hardly and drawn lessons from the past constantly. Eventually, we found the right path to achieve the great renewal of the Chinese nation, and achieved the development that draws the world's attention. At present, both China's comprehensive power and the Chinese people's living standard have been improved tremendously. In terms of GDP, China has become the second largest economy in the world, the biggest trading partner for 128 countries. The friendly exchanges and communication between China and other countries have become increasingly broader and closer.

In spite of achieving some accomplishments, we are soberly aware that uneven development is still the basic reality in China and a big developing country is still what China is. Indeed, China is neither rich nor strong. In terms of per capita income, China is still behind more than 80 countries. According to UN criteria, over 100 million people in China still live in poverty. We still have a long way to go before the 1.3 billion Chinese people can truly live a happy life. To this end, under the leadership of President Xi Jinping, China's new government set two grand goals: First, we will complete the building of a moderately prosperous society that benefits the over one billion Chinese people by 2020. Second, we will build China into a modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced and harmonious by 2049 when we mark the centenary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. And this is the "Chinese Dream", namely to achieve the great renewal of the Chinese nation.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Chinese Dream is the pursuit of peace and development, and longing for win-win cooperation by the Chinese people. It not only shows to the world China's development direction in the future, but also contains China's good will and abundant opportunities to promote the world's peace and development. Now China's economy has highly merged into the global economy. It is expected that in the next five years, China will import US$10 trillion worth of goods, and make overseas investment totaling US$500 billion. Over 400 million Chinese people will make outbound trips. In the future, China will focus more on win-win cooperation and common prosperity in opening-up, and continuously expand mutually beneficial cooperation with other countries. You can surely expect that China will adhere to the road of the peaceful development, and while realizing our Chinese Dream, China is bound to bring more positive spill-over effect to the world's economic development, and make more and enduring contributions to the peace and development of the region and the whole world.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Since the establishment of diplomatic ties between China and Singapore, we have enjoyed overall good bilateral relations. Both sides have frequent exchanges between our high-level officials and two peoples, and the cooperation in all areas goes smoothly. Now China is Singapore's third largest trading partner, the second largest tourists' source and an important investing destination. Singapore is China's third largest foreign investment source and the second largest trading partner in ASEAN. China and Singapore have a promising prospect and great potentials in future cooperation, and I believe new growth points will continuously come up. Here I am very glad to share with you that last month H.E. Mr. Lee Hsien Loong, Prime Minister of Singapore paid a successful official visit to China. The leaders of the two sides had in-depth and friendly talks, and pointed out the future development direction of our bilateral relations. What impressed me deeply is that in many functions during his visit to different cities in China, Prime Minister Lee met and received warm welcome from many local Chinese experts, scholars and officials who have the experience of studying or having been trained in Singapore. Prime Minister Lee had cordial talks with them. The atmosphere was relaxed and harmonious. It was a vivid and moving scene. This reminded me of the old Chinese saying: "Amity between the peoples holds the key to relations between countries; heart-to-heart exchange holds key to amity between the peoples." Therefore, I believe that as long as China and Singapore continuously strengthen exchanges and understanding, expand and solidify the public opinion foundation of our friendly cooperation, China-Singapore relations are bound to have broader prospect, and achieve more fruitful results.

Finally, may I propose a toast, to H.E. Mr. Tony Tan Keng Yam, President of the Republic of Singapore!

To the President!