Foreigners discuss CPC's key role in China's rise

China has a strong government that plans for the long-term, has the best interests of its people in mind, and creates the conditions where people can work toward prosperity, foreign experts said at a conference held in Shanghai on Tuesday.

Around 100 experts and scholars from home and abroad shared insights at the international academic conference themed "The Communist Party of China Governing the Country: Experiences and Enlightenment", which aims to better communicate the Party's development to the world and foster related research.

The conference was organized by the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the China Foreign Languages Publishing Administration and Fudan University.

David Ferguson, an editor with China International Publishing Group, said China has a strong government that provides stability and order, and its governance system focuses first on the human rights that matter the most.

"It includes the rights to earn a living through your work, to put food on the table, clothes on your back, a roof over your head, a school for your children, and prospects of a better future," Ferguson said.

Robert Walker, a professor at the School of Social Development and Public Policy at Beijing Normal University and a member of the Royal Academy of Social Sciences of the United Kingdom, spoke about poverty eradication and how China managed to eliminate absolute poverty earlier this year on Feb 25.

Coordination and mobilization are among the factors driving the success in the country, and this involves having policy targets, a strong political leadership, cooperation at all levels in the country, and human capital investment, he added.

"You can only create prosperity by working for it. But you can only work for prosperity if certain conditions exist. The very first condition is a strong and stable government, and then economic and social order to encourage people to work hard. You also need the government to provide an industrial base to make things that people need," Ferguson said. "China has all these conditions."

This sentiment was echoed by Leandro Compagnucci, head of the Argentine Investment Office under the Embassy of Argentina to China.

"China is still a developing economy, but the CPC has found a governance model that has proven to be very successful for this country," he said.

Compagnucci noted that the CPC has three achievements that must be highlighted: the unceasing growth of China's economy, the stability of Chinese society, and China's peaceful rise on the international stage.

"China has shown us that it is possible to adapt economic models to national realities and that, in fact, developing countries need to do so," he said.