“China’s development has entered a new era”

CHINA - President Xi Jinping laid out a confident vision for a more prosperous China and its role in the world on Wednesday, stressing the importance of wiping out corruption and curbing industrial overcapacity, income inequality and pollution. Opening the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in Beijing, the country’s most important political meeting in five years, Xi pledged the building of a modern socialist country for a “new era” that will be proudly Chinese and steadfastly ruled by the Party but open to the world. Xi, who is also the Party’s general secretary, said China’s development had entered a “new era,” using the phrase 36 times in a speech that lasted nearly three hours and 30 minutes. “With decades of hard work, socialism with Chinese characteristics has crossed the threshold into a new era,” Xi told more than 2,000 delegates in the Great Hall of the People.

Xi set bold long-term goals for China’s development, envisioning it as a “basically” modernized socialist country by 2035, and a modern socialist “strong power” with leading influence on the world stage by 2050.

He told delegates: “What we now face is the contradiction between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people’s ever-growing need for a better life.”

The evolution of the principal contradiction represents a “historic shift that affects the whole landscape and that creates many new demands for the work of the Party and the country,” he said. Previously, the principal contradiction was described as one between “the ever-growing material and cultural needs of the people and backward social production.”

China has seen the basic needs of over a billion people met, has been making it possible for people to live decent lives, and will soon bring the building of a moderately prosperous society to a successful completion, Xi said.

Xi said the Party had drawn up a two-stage development plan for the period from 2020 to the middle of the century, calling the plan the Party’s “strategic vision for developing socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era.”

In the first stage of the plan, from 2020 to 2035, the Party will build on the foundation created by the moderately prosperous society with a further 15 years of hard work to see that socialist modernization is basically realized. In the second stage, from 2035 to the middle of the 21st century, the Party will, building on having basically achieved modernization, work hard to develop China into a great modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious and beautiful.

By then, China will become a global leader in terms of national strength and international influence and common prosperity for everyone will be basically achieved.

(Xinhua)