Chinese President Xi Jinping delivered a speech at a gathering on December 18 to celebrate 40 years of China's reform and opening-up. He underlined China's commitment to opening up wider to the world and also stressed that “no one is in a position to dictate to the Chinese people what should or should not be done,” something that some western media have described as “defiant”.

“To be honest, it (the West) is reluctant to really accept China's rise in the way that it is taking place, because in some degree or other, it feels threatened or fearful or concerned about it,” said Martin Jacques, the author of When China Rules The World.

At a time when the relationship between China and the U.S. does not run smoothly, he worried that “people in the West don't really understand China even in relatively benign periods and this means that in the relatively tense and conflictual period, it's very easy to stoke prejudices, to speak to prejudices, to mobilize those kinds of attitudes, a fear of the unknown, of the other, of the culture which is alien to them, of a civilization that they know very little about.”

Since China's late leader Deng Xiaoping unveiled his reform and opening-up policies at the Third Plenary Session of the 11th CPC Central Committee in 1978, China has made great achievements. It is now the world's second largest economy and has lifted 740 million people out of poverty over the past four decades.

Wang Huiyao, president of the Center for China and Globalization, a think tank, emphasized that the world should recognize China's contribution to global development and its determination to continue its reform and opening-up.

He also reiterated Deng Xiaoping's well-known saying, “it doesn't matter if the cat is black or white as long as it catches mice.”