China Not Copies Others' Political Systems: JiangChinese President Jiang Zemin has said that China will not copy the political systems of other countries.Jiang made the remarks in his interview with the New York Times on August 8. "When conducting political reform, we should give full consideration to historical background and the level of economic development,culture and education of our country," he said. "The political reform should be conducted in such a manner as to promote national reunification, unity and social stability," he said. When asked to comment China's political reform, Jiang said that the very objective of China's political reform is to carry forward socialist democracy and legal system, improve the specific mechanisms of socialist democracy, ensure the people their full rights to democratic election, democratic decision-making, democratic administration and democratic supervision, increase the vitality of the Party and the country, fully mobilize the enthusiasm of the grassroots units and the general public, make the decision-making process more scientific and democratic and give greater scope to the advantages and features of the socialist system. "It has always been our objective to develop socialist democracy," he said. "We suggested a long time ago that without democracy, there would be no socialism, let alone socialist modernization." The essence of socialist democracy is that "people are masters of the country," Jiang said. China is a country with more than 5,000 years of ancient civilization. However, "it is only after the founding of New China that its people have truly become masters of their country, their society and their own destiny," he said. This "represents a fundamental change in the political status of the Chinese people," he stressed. "It marked a great leap forward from thousands of years of feudalistic autocracy to democracy in China." "This is the most fundamental for one to recognize in observing the present-day politics in China. Otherwise it would be impossible to have a fundamentally correct understanding of the essence of China's political system," he said. Jiang said that the world is diverse and colorful. All civilizations and social systems should try to find common ground and shelve differences and draw upon each other's strong points to make up for one's own deficiencies, he said. |
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