Socialism with Chinese characteristics ensures China's remarkable progress

China has made remarkable progress in modernization in the last half century, while the same progress took developed Western countries one or two hundred years. China's growth has not only brought direct benefits to more than 1.3 billion Chinese people but also promoted the world prosperity as it has become the engine for world economic growth.

Certain international observers cannot find an answer to this question: How did China make such remarkable progress in such a short time?

"The socialist system with Chinese characteristics, which fully embodies the distinctive features and strengths of socialism with Chinese characteristics, is a fundamental institutional guarantee of the development and progress of contemporary China," Hu Jintao uncovered the reasons for China's remarkable progress in his speech marking the Party's 90th birthday on July 1.

China has made extraordinarily rapid progress in modernization since the introduction of the reform and opening-up policy over 30 years ago because China's political system, which suits its level of development of productive forces, can improve decision-making and implementation efficiency, concentrate resources on major tasks and increase the ability to mobilize. Furthermore, socialism with Chinese characteristics advocates reform and innovation on the basis of learning as well as self-correction and pursuit of truth on the basis of practicing.

Developing a socialist country in China is an unprecedented cause. China's fundamental and basic political systems and basic economic system as well as the specific systems of economy, politics, culture and society, which are built upon the aforementioned systems, have all had distinct Chinese characteristics, conformed to China's context and followed the trend of the times, and are the combination of the basic theories of Marxism and China's reality.

China's socialist system with Chinese characteristics has gone beyond existing institutional design and values in the West, made history in China that is completely different from what it experienced over the past 5,000 years, and enhanced the freedom and prosperity of the Chinese people to an unprecedented level.

Despite the facts, some still assume that the "China system" seems "abnormal," and is not in line with presupposed values. Therefore, various types of "collapse theory" and "threat theory" have successively emerged. Doubts, criticisms and negation have always come along with the development of the Chinese society.

In fact, the success of any country must have been achieved based on an appropriate system. This is a simple idea. Without a set of systems consistent with China's development, how would the country have eliminated the poverty for hundreds of millions of its people and fed them? How would China have become the world's second largest economy and enabled its people to lead moderately prosperous lives? How would China have survived the international financial crisis and injected vitality to the weak world economy? How would China have repeatedly overcome challenges relating to natural disasters, calmly faced the risks involving the social transformation and achieved the stability and harmony of the entire society?

Now, let us suspend the theoretical dispute and see a specific example. Capital is extremely sensitive to the system, and in the era of economic globalization, the ability to attract investment is a widely acknowledged barometer for measuring the quality of a country's system. The fact is that China is attractive to large investment countries, capable of steadily attracting direct investments of foreign merchants, and has attracted many of top 500 enterprises of the world to come to invest and establish factories. A potential reason for this fact is that they accept the "Chinese system." Foreign media once said that the world has given an affirmative vote to the "Chinese system" using investments.

After the arduous exploration regarding what kind of socialist society to build and how to build it and after the great practice of reform and opening-up, China's system construction has realized a double-choice, which means China not only actively inherits its own merits and eliminates its own shortcomings, but also actively absorb the essence of any human civilization in the historical trend.

The "China legend" that is going on in the wide mainland of China has reflected the unique magnanimous capacity and integrating power of the "Chinese system" and showed the in-depth cultural confidence of China. As long as we learn from others, never give up our own advantages and never cease to make progresses, the "Chinese system" will definitely provide constant flow of energy for China's modernization.

By Chen Jiaxing from People's Daily, translated by People's Daily Online

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