Your Excellency President Li Xiannian, Honourable Premier Zhao Ziyang, Esteemed General Secretary Hu Yaobang, Honourable Members of the Politburo, Ladies and Gentlemen:
It is my first and very pleasant duty to convey to you my sincere and heartfelt gratitude for the welcome that your Government and people have so generously extended to me and members of my delegation. I am, Your Excellency, both honoured and very happy to be in your country at your kind invitation.
Though diplomatic relations were established between our two countries only twelve years ago, I come to China, in one important sense, as the representative of a country that has a long and happy association with this land. According to the ancient Chinese voyagers, Fa Hien and Ma Huan who wrote of our islands as the land of ‘Liu Shan’, the Chinese contact with our country goes back to the fourth and fifth centuries A.D. Indeed, many island communities in the Maldives have to this very day examples of porcelain obtained from visiting Chinese traders of long ago. In the historical perspective, therefore, our relationship is one of considerable duration.
The Maldives, both Government and people, look with confidence and expectation to a continuation of this historical relationship between our two countries and have every hope that it will strengthen still further in the years that lie ahead. If my visit can in any way further that ideal, then I will indeed be well pleased.
I come as the President of one of the world’s smaller nations to one of the world’s largest. It is a tribute of great merit to the age-old virtue with which this land is universally associated that we meet as equal partners with common views on the major issues which confront the world today.
It is a fact that whenever and wherever the application of the ethic of peaceful co-existence, state sovereignty, active opposition to interference and aggression by one state towards another, the People’s Republic of China is never found to be wanting. It is a matter of no small pride that we in the Maldives share with you and advocate as best we can those principles to which I have just made reference. That the People’s Republic is in so many instances in the vanguard, whenever in the momentous times in which we live progressive and peaceful means are called for, is no mere coincidence or matter of chance.
For if I am aware of one thing as I visit this ancient land it is that I am among a people whose chronicled ancestors stood at the gates and dawn of time - a people who built the world’s earliest and finest civilization and from which so many across the face of the earth have taken a living example. From China humanity learnt much in art, design, medicine, philosophy, and together with skills for the pursuit of knowledge, the principles of manufacture and much more.
The world, Your Excellency, has still a lot to learn from your nation, a fact witnessed by the many Chinese who work alongside their contemporaries in the developing world, sharing with them their experiences of development and passing on to them their skills and knowledge.
I am deeply conscious of the fact that I arrive here very soon after the 35th anniversary of the proclamation of the People’s Republic. At that time, that moment of history, the world stood momentarily still and there were many who viewed your great social crusade with scepticism. Yet, through the toil of your people, their own initiative and unparalleled resolution, you have undeniably triumphed and in the process confounded your critics and delighted your many friends.
Victory has been and indeed remains yours, and through that victory the people of China are heirs to a promising future of social justice and social equity. The outstanding lesson for the rest of the world, for countries both large and small, is that your remarkable advance has been accomplished through the effort of your own people and in a manner that has consistently been in conformity with the principles and the ethics of your great revolution. You have, as a Government and a people, persevered over the past thirty-five years in your triumphant march towards progress and prosperity.
Again, such perseverance has recently brought you more success. I refer of course to your recent agreement with the British Government on the future of Hong Kong. Your patience and commitment to the welfare of your country have not only generated success but have once more set an example to others.
We too, Your Excellency, seek solution through the currency of debate and negotiation to the problems which beset the human race today. We oppose, as our record at the United Nations and elsewhere clearly demonstrates, the growing practice of military intervention. Indeed, we were delighted with the recent statement by your Government which urged both the United States and the Soviet Union to put into greater effect the process of arms limitation and to approach the matter with greater resolution. The Maldives vigorously advocates on all occasions the principles of a significant reduction of the nuclear arsenal which not only threatens the very survival of mankind but is also a tragic waste in terms of resources which could be put to such better use in the war against poverty and disease.
We call too for an end to hostilities in the Middle East and in the Iran-Iraq conflict and urge dialogue between the two, as we constantly urge justice for the Palestinians, together with a recognition of their right to sovereignty and self-determination in their own land. At the same time we condemn the inhuman practice of apartheid and racial discrimination that is being perpetrated against the people in Southern Africa by the white minority regime of Pretoria.
Within our own immediate region, we seek an early implementation of the 1971 United Nations Resolution which calls for the declaration of the Indian Ocean as a Zone of Peace. Indeed, my Government wishes to see a prompt end to our region being used by foreign military and naval powers as a hotbed for their rivalries and global ambitions. We seek an Indian Ocean completely free of all military activity, and we take much encouragement in this regard from the moral support of the People’s Republic of China.
We take confidence, also, in that we have the support of China in our call for a re-organisation and a restructuring of the world’s trading and financial systems, so that greater equity and economic justice will prevail between industrialized and primary producing society.
Mr. President, Mr. Premier, Mr. General Secretary, Members of the Politburo, may I again thank you with all the sincerity and conviction at my command for the warm hospitality you have extended to me personally and to my colleagues. We will all carry home with us lasting memories of this great nation and its people.
Ladies and Gentlemen:
May I ask you to kindly rise and join me in a toast to His Excellency the President, the Honourable Premier, the esteemed General Secretary, the members of the politburo and to the People’s Republic of China.
Long live Chinese Maldives Friendship and Co-operation!