Interview: CPC's leadership key to China's success, says former Nigerian FM

ABUJA, April 9 (Xinhua) -- The leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC) is the key to China's success, which no other nation has ever achieved in such a short period of time, former Nigerian Foreign Minister Aminu Bashir Wali has said.

The CPC has built an effective governing system that allows the party to know what the majority of the Chinese people want, said Wali in a recent interview with Xinhua, noting that "the CPC represents the sum total of the aspirations of the Chinese people."

Before becoming Nigeria's foreign minister, Wali served as Nigeria's ambassador to China from 2009 to 2014. He is a member of Nigeria's Peoples Democratic Party.

The 79-year-old senior diplomat became interested in China as early as in the 1960s when he was studying in London. Gradually, he increased his knowledge about the Asian country by reading reports by Western media until he was appointed as Nigeria's ambassador to China, which presented him with the opportunity to see what the country was really like.

"Any person who arrives in China for the first time will be totally overwhelmed by what they will see. On my way to the airport, I never imagined what I would see, particularly the infrastructure," he said, reminiscing about his first trip to China in 2009.

"China has made a lot of progress from what we had seen or read when I was in London. When I arrived in China physically, my whole perception of China changed," added the former envoy who had traveled to many places in China and made many friends there "both officially and unofficially," whom he described as "open and helpful."

Wali said China's achievements in the past decades, such as the recent eradication of extreme poverty, have proved that there is a system that is worth learning from in the country.

"Countries like ours should reach out to study China, send out their planners to go and work with those in China to find out how best suited it (the system) is," said Wali.

China's success indicates that as long as a country chooses the right development system, it can achieve a lot just like China did, he added.