Nation's modernization drive attracts global attention

Shanghai forum participants salute new model for human advancement

As China strives to advance its modernization, international attention is focusing on how the nation will fulfill its ambition to become a modern socialist country by the middle of this century and how that process will affect the rest of the world.

The Communist Party of China laid out the central task of advancing national rejuvenation through a Chinese path toward modernization at its 20th National Congress in October.

The Party views Chinese modernization as not being solely related to achieving material wealth or a higher level of efficiency than that offered by the capitalist system. Rather, it is about effectively maintaining a higher degree of social equity, providing 1.4 billion people with a prosperous and dignified life, and promoting harmony between humankind and nature.

More important, the CPC pledged that Chinese modernization will lay a path for peaceful development, and that China will not achieve modernization through colonization or invasion. Neither will it seek hegemony or expansion.

In a congratulatory message sent to the Lanting Forum on Chinese Modernization and the World, held in Shanghai on April 21, President Xi Jinping assured the world that China will provide new opportunities for global development with new accomplishments in Chinese modernization.

It will also give new impetus to humanity's search for paths toward modernization and better social systems.

Xi's comments were echoed by political leaders, business executives and think tank researchers from nearly 80 countries taking part in the forum. They said China's modernization not only matters to the well-being of the Chinese people, but also creates a new model for human advancement.

Dilma Rousseff, president of the New Development Bank, said: "As a former president of Brazil, I am fully aware of what different patterns of modernization can mean for the peoples of the Global South. Over the centuries, a false modernization was imposed on us, which initially took the form of colonialism, with its killings of the indigenous population, slavery and predatory extractivism."

Rousseff said that more recently, financial neo-liberalism has implied a brutal process of concentration of income and wealth in the hands of a few, and once again, millions of people have been left behind.

"The push for modernization proposed and promoted by China provides a new choice and demonstrates that another world is necessary and possible. This is crucial at this time of greater fragmentation caused by climate change, by the intensification of geopolitical conflicts, by the disruption of production chains, and by a movement of de-globalization," she said.

Rousseff commended the Chinese path toward modernization, particularly its principle of promoting common prosperity.

"The great effect of this modernization for countries of the Global South lies in building a community with a shared future for mankind. And this commitment made by China could help bridge the gap between the global North and South and help create a more inclusive multipolar international order," she said.