increasingly, your economy depends on exchanges with other countries both imports and exports, of both goods and capital. foreign investment plays an essential role in your growth, while your holdings of foreign currencies and your management of your own currency are coming to play a vital part in the international monetary system.
this means that you have a stake in the development and prosperity of the wider world. and your security, too, depends on international peace and stability.
your government shows that it understands this, by the role that it plays in the united nations, and elsewhere. and increasingly, chinese citizens are called on to take risks, and make sacrifices, in the interests of global security. it was impressive to see, in our newspapers the other day, pictures of chinese policemen in blue helmets preparing to join the united nations mission in haiti an island buffeted by both human and meteorological storms, which is literally on the far side of the world from here.
so i am here, in part, to express the world's gratitude. clearly you in china have understood, as your saying goes, that we all share the same breath. human misery knows no frontiers, and nor should human solidarity.
indeed, solidarity was one of the fundamental values solemnly reaffirmed, four years ago, by the political leaders from all over the world who met at united nations headquarters, and issued the millennium declaration.
they declared that global challenges must be managed in a way that distributes the costs and burdens fairly…those who suffer or who benefit least deserve help from those who benefit most.
they promised to spare no effort to free more than one billion of their fellow men, women and children from extreme poverty, and to make the right to develo