Interview: CPC spearheads epoch-making endeavor for benefit of global community -- expert

KUALA LUMPUR, June 21 (Xinhua) -- The Communist Party of China (CPC), alongside its populace, is set to spearhead an epoch-making endeavor in the interests of the global community, a Malaysian expert told Xinhua on Sunday.

In a congratulatory message for the centennial celebration of the founding of the CPC, Ong Tee Keat, chairman of the Center for New Inclusive Asia, a think tank based in Kuala Lumpur, noted the CPC's "astounding success" in lifting hundreds of millions of Chinese people out of poverty in the past 40 years.

"This provides an exemplary model for the world to emulate in its pursuit of sustainable development," Ong said.

The expert said the model of governance provided by the CPC in China is now a glaring alternative to watch internationally, but the ideological rift from the Capitalist West has never deterred China, under the CPC rule, from discharging its international duties.

China has deployed troops to UN peacekeeping missions in war zones and promptly dispatched medical teams and personal protection equipment worldwide in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak, the expert noted.

Ong opposes the trumpeting of ideological disparity by developed nations, saying it is merely a hard reality in the pluralistic world.

"It is absolutely unethical to fault such diversity which is born out of the people's choices in the respective countries across the globe. Much less should it be made the excuse to stymie multilateral international collaboration in pursuit of common interest, particularly in the face of global existential threats," he said.

He warned the theory of purported clash of civilizations "is nothing but a self-fulling prophecy espoused to meet the aspiration of the dominating hegemons of the day."

The century-old Chinese ruling party, according to Ong, is offering a new paradigm to facilitate international collaboration.

The China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has made sustainable economic development accessible to the developing and underdeveloped world through infrastructural connectivity, whereas in the past development initiatives would only be brought to economically backward regions by the rich and powerful with attached conditionalities, the expert said.

"Small and weak participating countries of the BRI have since been having their voices heard through prior consultation, with their interests being factored into the BRI equation," Ong said, adding that the concept of mutuality, in the respects of mutual consultation, mutual participation and mutual benefit, "has taken the world by storm."

"All these constitute the basic building blocks for the ultimate realization of the ideal of building a shared future for humankind community as the interests across the globe are growing increasingly intertwined," he said, adding that the world needs to understand China and the CPC better from the right perspective.

"The Chinese narratives of its worldview deserve a spot in the center stage of the international community despite growing prejudice trumpeted against it by the ruling hegemon," he said.