BEIJING, Nov. 13 (Xinhua) -- Chinese pupils are better at math than most of their global peers. Teachers usually encourage them to solve a problem using whatever method works best to get the correct answer.
China's aspiration for a successful society that benefits all its people is much the same situation as the diligent math students.
Chinese President Hu Jintao's recent political announcement that China will follow a "path of socialism with Chinese characteristics" disappoints some Western ideologues. However, China's mode of socialism turned China from an impoverished country into the world's second largest economy in the past three decades and thus deserves sober-minded consideration and genuine respect.
The economic success of many industrialized countries, largely in the West, after World War II reinforced the self-righteousness of Westerners who tend to deride ways other than capitalism and who admonish the rest of the world to take a similar path.
Over the last couple of decades, some Western thinkers have asserted that history has ended with the triumph of capitalism and all other paths have been proven wrong. Nevertheless, as predicted by Karl Marx and Joseph Schumpeter, the intrinsic defects of capitalism result in recurrent crises, the latest round of which erupted on a chaotic Wall Street and in Frankfurt's financial district.
Among 90 percent of the world's countries adopting capitalism, only a tiny fraction can be regarded as prosperous. Capitalism, with a history of nearly 500 years, first acquired primitive accumulation through colonization and plundering, often by coercive means.
Modern capitalism and liberal democracy are sometimes compromised by money, as seen in the latest U.S. presidential election -- the most expensive in U.S. history -- with campaign costs soaring into the billions of dollars.
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