5. Putting forth the need for enhanced coordination in diplomatic work to ensure unified central leadership over operations.

To better coordinate the country's domestic and international agenda, the Party Central Committee attaches great importance to a holistic management of foreign affairs. It calls for balanced considerations, overall planning, unified command and coordinated implementation. It requires the central and local governments, non-governmental organizations and all foreign-related agencies to work together to form synergy, with each performing its respective functions. We should fully motivate all the parties involved and spark their creativity, and at the same time subject their activities to the unified management guided by national interests. Efforts should be made to ensure the smooth exercise of leadership by the Party Central Committee in decision-making, management and specific handling of foreign-related affairs so as to realize its strategic intentions in diplomatic work. In the past six months, by strengthening institution-building, sorting out relevant systems and mechanisms and formulating clear-cut regulations, the Party Central Committee has succeeded in improving the management of foreign-related work with stronger and better coordinated operations.

III. We must earnestly study and apply the achievements of innovations in diplomatic theory and practice to make new progress in diplomatic work.

China's diplomatic work under new conditions, which got off to a good start, has proceeded from a stage of planning to one of all-round implementation. Taking stock of the overall developments, we find ourselves still in an important period of strategic opportunities in which much can be accomplished. Yet we also face complex and daunting challenges. The important achievements of innovations in diplomatic theory and practice made by the Party Central Committee have not only laid a solid foundation for our diplomatic work in the immediate future, but also pointed out its correct direction. We should earnestly study and fully appreciate the essence of these innovations, draw inspirations from them and apply them in our diplomatic practice. We should build on the good beginning and forge ahead in a pioneering spirit. While continuing to improve on the strategic planning, we should give greater play to the leading role of leadership diplomacy, vigorously develop relations with other major countries, step up friendship and win-win cooperation with our neighboring countries and other developing countries and move the international order in a more just and equitable direction. We should work hard to popularize the new thinking and new ideas of Chinese diplomacy, implement the Party's mass line and people-oriented diplomacy, and endeavor to make new progress in our diplomatic work, thus creating a more enabling external environment to make the Chinese dream, the great renewal of the Chinese nation, come true.

The author is State Councilor and Director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Leading Group of the CPC Central Committee.

(China Daily 08/17/2013 page5)