It's time again at the year end for Beijing Review to review our top 10 news stories from the outgoing year.

After three years of the COVID-19 pandemic, business and daily life across the world returned to normal in 2023, with people-to-people exchanges resuming, business and trade increasing, the tourism industry recovering and consumption becoming more active.

Over the year, the world continued to experience profound changes unseen in a century. Peace and development remain the call of our day.

The Chinese economy remains the biggest engine of global growth, and the international use of China's currency the renminbi continues growing. In November, Chinese and U.S. presidents had a historic meeting in San Francisco, once again lowering the tension between the two countries and steering the relationship between the world's two largest economies back on course. This contributed to world peace and development and had a positive impact on the entire international community. 

Also during this year, BRICS membership expanded, once more enhancing the strength of solidarity and cooperation between developing countries; ChatGPT and other large language models became a sensation, drawing infinite imagination to the field of artificial intelligence; and the 28th Session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change concluded with a historic consensus to ratchet up global climate action.

But there are still many situations we never wanted to face. The ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine deepens people's desire for peace, and the outbreak of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the death of innocent civilians it caused add more sorrows to this desire. Worse still, the global village, already scarred by wars, was further damaged by Japan's discharge of nuclear-contaminated water into the ocean in July, a pain that will continue into the future.

Our hopes for the dawn of human peace and development continue as we welcome 2024. We hope the coming year will not only bring global economic growth, but also an end to the gloom currently enveloping the human community. The light at the end of the tunnel is in sight and it is also within reach if we advance toward it together.