The world today faces both unprecedented development opportunities and structural adjustments unseen in the past centuries. From a historical perspective, we live in a time of rapid scientific and technological progress, huge material abundance, flourishing prosperity of civilizations and rising interdependence among countries. The trend of peace and development has never been stronger. However, we also face the reality of increasing uncertainties and destabilizing factors in human society where intertwined risks appear in multiple fields and new challenges and regional conflicts keep cropping up.

The world's major trends are still peace, cooperation, and development, but there are more obstacles and difficulties, more rapid developments, more complicated, and more difficult to predict; Competition between major countries is increasingly fierce; outbreak of conflicts and wars in regions; increasing arms race, especially the risk of nuclear arms race and nuclear war.

To begin with, I would like to share with you some of my observations on the current world situation. With only three years to go before the 20th century ends, mankind is about to cross the threshold of another millennium, bringing what we accomplished in the past into the future. At this turn of the century, we can see a world that is caught in profound and complex changes; profound because such changes touch upon the fundamental question of "where the world is headed," and complex because they involve the readjustment of interrelations between various forces in the world. This is a time of difficulties and challenges on the one hand and opportunities and hopes on the other. At present, the international situation as a whole is moving towards relaxation and the trend towards a multipolar world is accelerating.

The world is undergoing profound changes unseen in a century. A large group of emerging markets and developing countries are growing rapidly. At the same time, unilateralism, protectionism and bullying practices are on the rise in international affairs, bringing more uncertainty and instability to the world.

At present, the international situation is most favourable to the developing countries and the peoples of the world. More and more, the old order based on colonialism, imperialism and hegemonism is being undermined and shaken to its foundations. International relations are changing drastically. The whole world is in turbulence and unrest. The situation is one of “great disorder under heaven,” as we Chinese put it. This “disorder” is a manifestation of the sharpening of all the basic contradictions in the contemporary world. It is accelerating the disintegration and decline of the decadent reactionary forces and stimulating the awakening and growth of the new emerging forces of the people.

[...] despite how hard sometimes the world seems to be, and all you see on television is war and conflict and poverty and violence, the truth is that if you had to choose when to be born, not knowing where or who you would be, in all of human history, now would be the time. Because the world is less violent, it is healthier, it is wealthier, it is more tolerant and it offers more opportunity than any time in human history for more people than any time in human history. Now, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t still terrible things happening around the world or in this region. We still have things like human trafficking. And we still have terrible abuse of children. And there are conflicts. And so these are things that we’re going to have to tackle and deal with. But you should know that with each successive generation things have improved just a little bit. And over time, that little bit adds to a lot. And it’s now up to you, the next generation, to make sure that 20 years from now, or 30 years from now, people look back and say, wow, things are a lot better now than they were back then. And there will still be problems 20 or 30 years from now also. But they will be different problems, because you will have solved many of the problems that exist today.

We also have a world facing multiple crises: a wave of brutal armed conflict,the negative effect of climate change , increasing polarized societies , inequalities discrimination and rising cost of living.

Since the inception of the new century, international situations have undergone complex and profound changes. Against the background of the in-depth development of economic globalization, interdependence among countries is continuously deepening. To peruse peace, promote cooperation and seek development has become the theme of the current era. However, our world is far from peaceful, and destabilizing and unpredictable factors are obviously growing. Blood-shed and clashes resulting from ethnic, religious, territorial issues and other traditional security factors have not become fewer and non-traditional threats to security represented by transnational crimes, epidemic diseases, terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction are increasing day by day. Mankind is facing an unprecedented severe challenge.

Today, humanity is at a turning point in its path of development and the nature of international relations is changing dramatically. The transnational threats to peace, security and sustainable development are growing. The climate is rapidly changing. The mass migration flows are increasing and traditional values are declining.

Today, as we look around, we see sluggish global economic recovery, resurging cold war mentality, rising regional conflicts, and security threats emerging one after another. Our world is far from tranquil, and people across the countries long for peace, development and cooperation.

Most of the things that are happening in the world right now are because we have chosen to put profits above the people and our planet.

This century has seen...a world civilization threatened with self-destruction, not only through war but through the exploitation of all the kingdoms in nature...

The world order as we know it is changing. The world is much less stable, and our region too is changing every day. These are difficult, tragic times. Our hearts are with the civilians of eastern Ukraine who were caught up in this situation.

Our world is going through a crisis of dehumanization, breakup of family life, a general loss of moral values.