Xi strikes strident tone on foreign policy China will never compromise on what it considers its "core interests" and "legitimate rights," its new leader Xi Jinping has said in his first published speech on foreign policy since taking over as leader of the ruling Communist party in November. Addressing the party's elite 25-member Politburo, he struck a noticeably more strident tone than his predecessor Hu Jintao, insisting that China would "stick to the road of peaceful development but never give up our legitimate rights and never sacrifice our national core interests." For most of the past decade China's official foreign policy stance has been defined by the mantra of "peaceful development" but, by adding the language on rights and core interests, Mr Xi appears to be hinting at a tougher stance on the international stage. If Mr Xi does intend to pursue a more assertive foreign policy that would be very worrying for many other countries in the region, such as Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines, which are already embroiled in territorial disputes with Beijing over parts of the East China Sea and South China Sea. "No country should presume that we will engage in trade involving our core interests or that we will swallow the bitter fruit of harming our sovereignty, security or development interests," Mr Xi was quoted as saying in a summary of his speech published by Chinese state media on Tuesday. But he also said China would not "pursue development at the cost of sacrificing other country's interests" and he insisted that Beijing remained committed to maintaining the multilateral trade system and participating in global economic governance. I don't expect a sharp nationalist turn because the Chinese economy is still highly dependent on the US and the west Scott Kennedy, Indiana University "This speech appears to be mostly aimed at domestic consumption and scoring some easy political points," said Scott Kennedy, director of the Research Center for Chinese Politics and Business at Indiana University. We'll have to wait and see what substantive policies Xi and the rest of the new leadership pursue but I don't expect a sharp nationalist turn because the Chinese economy is still highly dependent on the US and the west. Shinzo Abe, Japan's prime minister, suggested on Tuesday that China and Japan should hold a summit or high-level talks to calm tensions over disputed uninhabited islands in the East China Sea that both sides claim but which have been administered by Japan for decades. He also said there was "no room for negotiations" over the sovereignty of the islands, reiterating Tokyo's position. Since taking over as leader of the Communist party and head of the Chinese military in November, Mr Xi has made a series of pronouncements and public appearances that seem primarily aimed at boosting his popularity and appeasing various powerful interest groups within the party. These include a high-profile crackdown on corruption and lavish official spending, pledges to continue economic reform and orders to the army to form itself into a more effective fighting force that is prepared to go to war to defend the nation. Expectations have been running high in China that Mr Xi might be planning to introduce significant economic or political reforms, but so far there is little evidence he intends to do any such thing. In recent days, unverified excerpts of an internal speech Mr Xi supposedly made in December have him lamenting the fall of the Soviet Union and highlighting the lessons of that event for Beijing's current leaders. "Proportionally, the Soviet Communist party had more members than we do, but nobody was man enough to stand up and resist [the party's demise]," Mr Xi is quoted by independent online commentators as saying in this speech, which they say has been circulated among senior party members.