In fact, promoting good-neighborliness, deepening friendship and forging new areas of cooperation with neighboring countries have been an important hallmark of China's new leadership, and both Xi and Premier Li Keqiang have been earnestly practicing what they advocate.

In the past week, the heads of three neighboring governments - India, Mongolia and Russia - were in Beijing, again highlighting the fact that the new leadership's blueprint for the country's diplomacy is focused on neighboring countries.

And this month alone Xi attended the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Bali, Indonesia, and paid state visits to Indonesia and Malaysia, while Li arrived at Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei on Oct 9 to attend the East Asia leaders' meetings and paid official visits to Brunei, Thailand and Vietnam.

The regional focus of the new leadership was already noticeable in September when Xi visited Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia and attended the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Bishkek, capital of Kyrgyzstan. In the same month, Li received regional leaders attending the 10th China-ASEAN Expo held in Nanning, Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.

Such intensive diplomacy with countries in China's vicinity is helping to identify convergence points for cooperation and forge a close network of common interests. As Xi emphasized in his speech, China and its neighbors are a community with a shared destiny, and only through better integration of China's interests with those of its neighbors' can they benefit from China's development and China benefit from theirs.

Admittedly, China's bilateral ties with its neighbors are at different levels. Some are just like our brothers who support and help each other unselfishly; some are our old friends with cordial ties and deepening cooperation; some have comparatively limited cooperation with China while a few have disagreements or even problems with China in one way or another.

But as Xi said, the constant principle of China's diplomacy with its neighbors is friendship.

What Xi and Li have been demonstrating since they took office is the country's sincerity in its efforts to build stronger mutually beneficial friendships with countries in the region and to overcome any differences in order to build a harmonious environment for common prosperity.

The author is a senior writer with China Daily. wanghui@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 10/28/2013 page8)