China on the way to perform more miracles

While helping China achieve an economic miracle, reform and opening-up has also facilitated the most comprehensive modernization campaign and initiated the most important political remolding of the Chinese nation. It is truly a political miracle based on China’s history, self-innovation and experiences gathered from international interactions.

History shows that whenever China has lacked a strong central leadership, the country faced divisions, war, chaos and poverty. No wonder the Chinese people today highly appreciate China’s political unitization and strong central leadership.

China’s current multi-party cooperative system under the leadership of the Communist Party of China’s is an embodiment of this political tradition, which also pays relatively greater attention to responsibility and obligation. Thus, the CPC’s leadership, as the most essential feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics, has been written into the Constitution.

China’s political structure, from the imperial civil examination system to the current multi-level talents selection system, has enabled it to build a practical, high-quality bureaucracy. For instance, today officials with good political performance, good education and grassroots working experience have a greater chance of being promoted.

China’s political success also comes from its endless efforts to learn from the outside world. For example, socialism with Chinese characteristics is the localization of Marxism in China, which helped the country realize national independence and sovereign integrity that all Chinese people assiduously pursued for decades.

During China’s dynastic era, the selection and promotion of officials mainly depended on the imperial civil examination system. But in contemporary China, the system has been made more scientific. For instance, the system to evaluate officials’ performance has become more effective and in tune with the times after shifting its focus from GDP-orientated to multifaceted performance, which includes economic growth, people’s welfare and environmental protection.

Advancing with the times and pursuing self-innovation have also contributed to China’s political achievements. For example, when China drew up a strategic political reform strategy but lacked a clear idea about specific tactical measures, the authorities first established a bottom line, so as to keep the risks emanating from political restructuring and various innovation efforts under control. This is also the basic principle set by former leader Deng Xiaoping in the early days of the reform and opening-up.

With the passage of time and accumulation of experiences, China has continuously finetuned its previous reform measures in a bid to make them more effective.

Thanks to reform and opening-up, the Chinese nation has experienced an unprecedented evolution and transformation, and achieved goals in only a few decades which Western countries took a couple of centuries to achieve. And from a historical point of view, China’s successes on many fronts in the past decades are only the beginning of such achievements.

With the passage of time and accumulation of experiences, China has continuously fine-tuned its previous reform measures ...

The author is a researcher at the China Institute of Fudan University in Shanghai.