BEIJING, June 3 (Xinhua) -- China on Monday voiced its appreciation of Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong's China-related remarks at the opening ceremony of this year's Shangri-La Dialogue held in Singapore.

Lee said countries have to accept that China will continue to grow and strengthen, and that it is neither possible nor wise for them to prevent this from happening.

"The Chinese side appreciates Lee's remarks," Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Geng Shuang told a press conference.

Geng mentioned Lee's remarks saying China's growth is a tremendous boon, both for itself and the world, and China's expectation of a say in the making of new rules is reasonable.

Geng also mentioned Lee's remarks that "to expect every country to adopt the same cultural values and political system is neither reasonable nor realistic. In fact, humankind's diversity is its strength."

Saying there was a lot of discussion at the Shangri-La Dialogue on China's development and regional cooperation, Geng stressed that he believes Lee's speech reflected the common aspiration of countries in the region to pursue peaceful development rather than confrontation, to strive for win-win cooperation rather than zero-sum game, to open rather than close doors, and to boost exchange rather than a clash of civilizations.

"This is also China's consistent position," Geng said, adding that China hopes such objective, fair, rational and pragmatic views would be more widely shared while those self-righteous and narrow-minded remarks would go nowhere.