“To understand China today, one must learn to understand the Communist Party of China (CPC),” said Chinese President Xi Jinping when addressing the opening ceremony of the 2021 Understanding China Conference (Guangzhou) on December 2.

(Photo: Newsgd.com)

Ye Xiaowen, Deputy Director of the Cultural, History and Learning Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, noted that the root of the CPC lay in the fertile soil of Chinese civilization. And it, therefore, inherits the spirit of Chinese culture, such as believing in that “the world belongs to all” and “harmony is most precious”, which ensures the Party’s commitments to build a community of shared future for mankind as well as to uphold the common value of peace, development, fairness, justice, democracy, and freedom.

“China is both a civilization state and a nation state,” said Martin Jacques, visiting Professor at Tsinghua University. “The success of the Chinese Communist Party has been its ability to express, reflect, and articulate Chinese civilization.”

Jacques believes that the historical and civilizational continuity where the CPC was born and developed is what makes China different from the West. “Chinese civilization shapes the present,” said Jacques, while in western countries, civilization is more about the remote values of their history.

Although the difference, in Jacques’ opinion, remains, “the West is violently ignorant” of it and still seeks to interpret China through a western point of view. Such indifference to the fact and refusal to understand China’s own characteristics “become more extreme in the periods” when they are in trouble.

John Milligan-Whyte, Executive Chairman of America-China Partnership Foundation, holds a similar view when it comes to China-US relations. “America is unrealistic in that they hope China could copy the American essence, but it has been always obvious to me that China cannot, should not, and will not copy any nation’s system of governance and economic management.”

He furthered, “the reality is that the political and economic systems have enabled China to become the world’s second largest economy. Americans did not expect the speed and global impact of China’s success created by its ‘guardian Party’. It is a traumatic shock to America that they could not understand.”

In terms of the CPC’s governance, Jacques stressed that as a country with the world’s largest population and thousands of years of history, China “requires a special kind of leadership, one that seeks to unify rather than divide; that has deep roots amongst the people; that prioritizes the unity of the country above all else”.

Author | Lydia Liu, Jasmine

Editor | Wing, Keane, Jerry