Commentary
PARIS – China’s modernization, which has realized an economic miracle and improved the well-being of its people, illustrates an innovative approach to solving humanity’s most pressing problems.
This view is echoed and well elaborated in the latest report released on Saturday at a China-France forum on developing people-to-people and cultural exchanges in Paris.
“Chinese Modernization: The Way Forward” offers an authoritative interpretation of Chinese modernization and is key to understanding contemporary China’s development experience.
Throughout history, Western modernization theories have been constructed based on Western experiences. The development of most developed Western countries has been a gradual process, progressing in the sequence of industrialization, urbanization, agricultural modernization, and digitalization.
In this context, China, as the largest developing country, grapples with a vast territory, a significant population and pronounced regional disparities. Its path to modernization requires resolving numerous intricate issues, some of which the West has never encountered.
China, in response, has charted a course of coordinated development, diverging from the Western modernization trajectory. In a remarkably short period, it has accomplished an industrialization process that took the developed Western countries several centuries, thereby forging a path of rapid economic development and enduring social stability.
The Chinese modernization has provided an alternative approach to development and allowed nationalities to accelerate growth while maintaining self-reliance and independence, shattering the delusion that modernization equals Westernization.
For developing countries, modernization is a must. China’s development demonstrates that there is neither a fixed model nor a universal standard of modernization. There is more than one path to modernization.
The report, co-issued by the Institute of Party History and Literature of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and Xinhua Institute, which is a high-end think tank of Xinhua News Agency, lists detailed characteristics of Chinese modernization.
Unlike Western modernization, the report noted, the Chinese version puts people, not capital, first; it debunks the rhetoric of “the end of history” and pursues the constant improvement and innovation of systems and institutions; it pursues a model of comprehensive and coordinated development; it ensures that the people run their country and that democracy is not practiced for the few; it strives to both preserve cultural heritage and enrich it; and it rejects unilateralism in global governance and advances the building of a human community with a shared future.
Modernization is not only about the economy but also about the well-rounded development of the people. Chinese modernization aims to ultimately achieve every individual’s full and free development.
In this process, China has won the battle against poverty, lifting one-fifth of the world’s population out of absolute poverty, an unprecedented achievement in history.
China has become the world’s second-largest economy, with its GDP growing to 126 trillion yuan in 2023. Such achievements have greatly lifted the nation’s position in the global economic system after the advent of modern times and contributed significantly to the world economy.
A world of peaceful development should accommodate diverse forms of civilization and paths to modernization. As the world faces profound changes, China has vigorously promoted the common values of peace, development, fairness, justice, democracy and freedom for humankind while rejecting cliques and zero-sum games.
Meanwhile, the global community needs joint efforts to expand the convergence of interests and build a new type of international relations based on mutual respect, fairness, justice and win-win cooperation.
China’s ongoing modernization will lead to further development and contribute to building a better future for humanity.
– Xinhua
