Kevin Rudd, Australia's former prime minister Photo: VCG

I have been a student of Chinese language, history and politics for over 40 years now, from my days in the Department of Chinese at the Australian National University.  I remember trying hard to read as an undergraduate the People’s Daily reports of the Third Plenum of the 11th Central Committee in 1978. And I have studied each national congress of the Party since then. So although I am a foreigner with all the limitations that come with it, in a small way I have been with China through the great changes we have seen since the earliest days of "reform and opening."

I have done this in many different capacities as a simple scholar, a diplomat posted to your embassy in Beijing, a businessman, a member of parliament, foreign minister, prime minister and now the head of an American think tank, the Asia Society Policy Institute, in New York.

It has also been my privilege to participate in discussions with various Chinese leaders over the years and I have benefited greatly from their wisdom.

That is the framework I adopt when I look at the overall significance of this19th National Party Congress in 2017. The truth is that China has traveled a massive journey over the seven Party congresses I have witnessed. When I began my studies, the Chinese economy was about the same size as Australia’s. Now it is larger than the United States’ in terms of public-private partnership, and within the next decade will do so in market exchange rates as well. You have also brought nearly 700 million people out of poverty, so much so that the UN Millennium Development Goals which concluded in 2015 were largely achieved on the basis of China’s achievements alone. There is nothing dignified about poverty. Being liberated from the indignity of poverty is no small thing. All Chinese should be proud of what by any measure is a stunning national achievement. This has been the product of policy continuity over generations of Chinese leaders based on the core principles of market-based reforms at home, and an embrace of economic globalization abroad. These will remain the key principles for a successful China for the future as well.

More recently, Chinese leaders have recognized the need to adapt a future strategy by adopting its new economic reform blueprint to transforming the Chinese economic model. This 2013 decision was viewed in the West as an impressive document. It reflected a rational analysis of China’s economic challenges in moving from a model based on low wage, labor-intensive, environmentally polluting manufacturing for export -- to a new model based on higher wages, higher skills, technology and innovation-led drive for productivity growth and environmental sustainability, reflected in a burgeoning services sector, rapidly expanding domestic consumer demand and an increasingly entrepreneurial private sector. This is yet another massive policy challenge. It involves significant levels of disruption, as has been the case with previous efforts at reforming what was previously a wholly planned economy, including Deng Xiaoping’s assault on China’s legendary “iron rice bowl.” But the long term economic yield both for China and the world will be even more significant if and when this reform agenda is fully implemented.

This brings us to Xi Jinping’s most recent work report to the 19th CPC National Congress. What is deeply encouraging is the General Secretary’s continued commitment to the implementation of this next stage of economic reform. In the international community, we are all familiar with the global economic headwinds of the last five years, including the underperformance of both the US and European economies. Fortunately we have now seen the fruits of a strong global economic recovery. The international conditions are therefore ripe for the next set of reforms to take root and produce their fruit.

Many of these reforms will prove to be controversial as they are being implemented. But they are fundamental to the “new era of socialism with Chinese characteristics” that Xi Jinping announced in his work report. I remember when Deng Xiaoping came up with the formulation of “socialism with Chinese characteristics.” It provided the ideological framework for the major policy tasks of that era, including the fundamental reform of State planning and inflexible price controls on a wide range of goods, regardless of real market conditions. But now the reform challenge has become more fundamental again, requiring new policy flexibility in the reform of State-owned enterprises, the role of a burgeoning private sector in China’s mixed economy, together with fiscal management reforms, foreign investment, foreign trade and competition policy, as well as its financial system, labor market and land reform. These are big reforms, requiring a fresh ideological framework, within the parameters of the overall socialist development model Chinese leaders have chosen for their country.

Apart from the future of the Chinese economy, as well as the related challenge on the management of China's global environmental footprint, there is one further question often asked in the international community about China’s rise. And that is once China becomes wealthy and powerful, does China intend to use its wealth and power in the world? Inevitably this will involve change. But the question being asked is what sort if change?  And this brings us to the other part of Xi Jinping's report to the Congress: the development of his concept of a “global community of common destiny of all mankind.”

There are two prevailing paradigms for the future of international relations in the 21st century: One is based on the inevitability of conflict between rising powers and established powers; the other on the institutions of cooperation. I sometimes worry whether with the passing of time, we have all forgotten the folly of war. Yet to construct the alternative future, and to avoid the Thucydides Trap, requires the building of mutual strategic trust over time. This is best done at multiple levels: bilaterally, regionally and globally. It is achieved by tackling common problems together, even difficult ones like the North Korean nuclear problem, and building trust step by step. It cannot be done overnight.  But like Deng Xiaoping’s old axiom for economic reform, by “crossing the river, by feeling your way, stone by stone." The same applies to building trust in international relations, particularly between China and the US.

Ten years ago, as prime minister of Australia, I first launched the idea of building an Asia-Pacific community over time. This was designed to unite all of us in the region, including China and the US, into a common regional framework, notwithstanding continuing strategic disagreements about certain critical security policy problems. Such a regional approach, which I argued then and now should be based on expanding the mandate of the East Asian Summit, was aimed at preserving the “long peace” we have enjoyed in Asia for nearly half a century - a peace that has underpinned much of our common prosperity. It also rested on the idea that despite deep differences, we could build regional institutions over time based on a shared destiny for the future of the Asia-Pacific region.

This is one of the reasons I support Xi Jinping's global concept of a “community of common destiny for all human-kind."  There is a danger to slip back into Cold War attitudes. And “hot wars” tend to become more probable as the political and strategic divide hardens, diplomacy begins to fail, and the instruments of cooperation become idle. Of course, there is much more work to be done on Xi’s concept. But this is work worth doing. We may fail. But it would be deeply irresponsible if we failed to try.

That is in part why I have recently begun a new research project at Oxford University on Xi Jinping’s worldview. It’s important now for the world to understand how China thinks about its future engagement in the world, just as it’s important for China to understand how the world, beyond the standard slogans, actually thinks about China’s role in the emerging global order of the 21st century. To be successful, this needs to be more than a paper exercise. It must be real for us all, including not just nice diplomatic thoughts, but the hard realities of military strategy and preparedness as well. But I do think Xi Jinping has provided us with a useful starting point for a necessary and increasingly urgent global conversation to begin if we are to preserve prosperity and security for all in the 21st century.

The author is a former Australian prime minister and head of Asia Society Policy Institute in New York.