Course for the future charted with arrival of centenary
Having lived in China for 33 years, William Brown, a professor of organizational behavior at Xiamen University's School of Management in Fujian province, has witnessed the great achievements made under the leadership of the Communist Party of China.
The CPC used its centenary this year to reflect on its accomplishments and assess how it could continue to succeed, enabling Brown to better understand what lies behind China's achievements.
"With the same creativity and perseverance with which the country carried out its targeted poverty alleviation campaign and contained the COVID-19 pandemic, China now leads the world in fighting desertification, deforestation, food and water insecurity, and illiteracy－virtually all the global challenges that face every country," said Brown, who moved to China from the United States with his family in 1988.
After decades of observing the changes, he attributes China's progress to its governance system.
"China has an effective and efficient government. Unlike so-called democracies with multiple parties and contradictory self-seeking political goals, China adopts a democracy that is part of the system of multiparty cooperation and political consultation under the leadership of the CPC," Brown said.
The Party has clearly played a fundamental role in the nation's development. As President Xi Jinping has said, "To understand China today, one must learn to understand the CPC."
In the 100 years since it was founded, the CPC has rallied and led the Chinese people in making unremitting efforts that have fundamentally changed the nation's destiny and exerted a profound impact on the course of world history, said Xi, who is also general secretary of the CPC Central Committee.
Brown said that among the great number of achievements China has made, poverty alleviation has impressed him the most. He has driven almost 200,000 kilometers around the country, including areas such as Ningxia Hui autonomous region, which was once deemed "utterly hopeless" by the UN. He saw the changes that had taken place in people's lives wherever he travelled.
The ever-pragmatic Chinese adopted the strategy of "roads first, then riches," as they believed transportation infrastructure is fundamental to development, he said, adding, "Very simple, very pragmatic－and it worked."
In 1994, it took Brown three months to drive 40,000 km around China, but more than 20 years later in 2019, it took him only 32 days to complete the journey by following the same route.
"Even those once-poorest villages in Ningxia now have concrete roads that lead right to the villagers' doorsteps," he said. "The most amazing thing, to me at least, was that not only did people in remote valleys in the Tibet autonomous region have access to electricity and the internet, but they engage in thriving online e-commerce."
During his trips, Brown asked numerous rural people nationwide why their lives had improved. Many of them said, "Life is good because policies are good."
He said he then asked why policies were good, and a large number of people replied, "Because the government knows our needs and cares for us."
Development philosophy
The poverty alleviation campaign, reinforced after the 18th CPC National Congress in 2012, lifted the country's 98.99 million impoverished people in rural areas out of extreme poverty.
Observers said China's poverty relief efforts clearly exemplify the Party's people-centered development philosophy, which is the CPC's overarching governance principle and the key to China's successful efforts in containing the pandemic and promoting economic recovery.
Addressing a grand gathering in Beijing to celebrate the Party's centenary on July 1, Xi reiterated upholding the CPC's fundamental purpose of wholeheartedly serving the people and ceaselessly working to improve their lives.
"We will develop whole-process people's democracy, safeguard social fairness and justice, and resolve the imbalances and inadequacies in development and the most pressing difficulties and problems that are of great concern to the people," he said. "In doing so, we will make more notable and substantive progress toward achieving well-rounded human development and common prosperity for all."
To ensure all members remain true to the Party's founding mission of unswervingly working to seek happiness for the people and the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation with even firmer ideals and beliefs, the CPC Central Committee launched a Party history learning and education campaign early this year.
The campaign has been viewed as a timely and necessary move for the Party to draw strength from its glorious past to advance the country's modernization drive despite the increasing challenges ahead.
More important, the sixth plenary session of the 19th CPC Central Committee, which ended last month with a landmark resolution on the major achievements and historical experience of the CPC's 100 years of endeavors, charted a course for China's future.
The resolution highlighted Xi's core position on the CPC Central Committee and in the entire Party as well as the significance of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era in advancing the cause of the Party and the State.
Xi said at the plenary session, "The review of the major achievements and historical experience of the Party over the past century will help build a broader consensus and stronger unity in will and action among all members and rally and lead Chinese people of all ethnic groups in achieving new and great success in building socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era."
Wolfram Adolphi, a political scientist and sinologist from the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation based in Germany, said the CPC's 100-year history is not only important for China, but for mankind.
China's future decisions are significant for the whole world, said Adolphi, who has conducted research on Chinese politics and the CPC for more than 40 years.
In an op-ed article published on China Global Television Network's website, he said, "To slow down climate change, to solve the urgent problems of ecological development, to keep up with digitalization, to create a worldwide system of collective security, and finally to come to lasting peace－this all is unthinkable without China."
Christopher Helali, international secretary of the Party of Communists USA, said the significance of the landmark resolution is historic for the world, as it heralds a new era of socialist development and transformation in China which is unparalleled in global history.
Communist, socialist and Marxist parties worldwide look to China as a model to emulate, as they continue their work to build socialism and provide for the prosperity and development of all people around the globe, Helali said.
Xi announced on July 1 that China had achieved its first centenary goal of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects. The nation is marching toward the second centenary goal of building a modern socialist country by the middle of this century.
What will a modern socialist China bring to the world? Xi offered his answer, "China's development is opportunities for the world."
Experts have said China's peaceful rise－unprecedented in both scale and speed－shows there has never been a one-size-fits-all development model, and the style adopted in the West is not the only viable route to modernity.
The communique from the sixth plenary session of the 19th CPC Central Committee said the world's largest ruling party has "led the people in pioneering a uniquely Chinese path to modernization, creating a new model for human advancement, and expanding the channels for developing countries to achieve modernization."
However, China has made clear that it has no intention of selling its own development path to the world. It welcomes countries around the world to "get on board the express train of China's development" through mutually beneficial and win-win cooperation.
Adolphi, the German political scientist, said Western leaders unfortunately have a problem with accepting China's rise.
"Obviously, they are unwilling to understand that the growing role that China plays is not damaging to the world, but is the renaissance of normality," he said. "Instead of taking this development as a chance for a new type of cooperation and a common approach to the world's problems, they perceive it as a new Cold War, a new conflict of systems and a revival of old enemy images."
The latest example of this is Washington handpicking some countries and regions to take part in its so-called Summit for Democracy on Dec 9-10 with a view to rallying "democracies" against what it considers to be "authoritarian "states.
Analysts said the meeting was a fresh attempt by the US to provoke divisions and ideological confrontation worldwide. Washington aims to reassert its hegemony as the so-called leader of the free world in order to reinforce its efforts to deploy a new anti-China strategy by labeling the CPC as "authoritarian", they said.
Carlos Martinez, co-founder of the No Cold War campaign and an author and activist based in London, said Washington wants to further establish a coalition of the US' traditional allies. "An obvious example of this is the announcement of this AUKUS (Australia, United Kingdom, US) pact in September. It's very clearly part of a broader strategy of China containment," he said.
Martinez added that the limitations of the Western democratic model are increasingly plain to see. "Under this model, people have the right to vote for one or the other party, but they never really see substantive improvements in their conditions. They can vote for a personality, a party, a brand, but they can't vote for the type of economic and political change that they really need," he said.
In contrast, the CPC has developed whole-process people's democracy, a socialist democracy model that covers all aspects of the democratic process－including elections, decision-making, management and oversight－and all sectors of society.
This month, the State Council Information Office released a white paper clarifying how democracy works in China. The document states that whether a country is democratic or not should be judged by its people, not dictated by a handful of outsiders. Assessing the world's myriad political systems against a single yardstick, and examining diverse political structures in monochrome, are in themselves undemocratic, it adds.
In a video speech delivered to the opening of the Imperial Springs International Forum on Dec 5, Xi reiterated that the CPC would unswervingly follow the path of peaceful development and opening-up to the world, work for a community with a shared future for mankind, and promote humanity's common values of peace, development, fairness, justice, democracy and freedom.
Ali Sarwar Naqvi, executive director of the Center for International Strategic Studies in Islamabad, Pakistan, said the past 100 years in China have seen "a marvelous history full of dedication, sincerity and hardworking selflessness with vision by a single party－the Communist Party of China."
He told Xinhua News Agency, "A rising China is not only benefiting its own people but also the people beyond its borders."
Brown, the Xiamen University professor, said that with the Belt and Road Initiative, China is simply applying its pragmatic "roads first, then riches" method in other nations－especially those in Africa.
"My youngest son, who lives with his wife and children in Africa and does volunteer medical and social work, says that in the remotest areas, he sees Chinese working alongside Africans to help build highways, railways, dams, bridges, ports and airports," he said.
Brown added that history proves that a strong China is not a threat to peace, but rather a force for it－and perhaps the only hope for the underdeveloped world that is still struggling in extreme poverty.