What They Say

Editor's note: Launch of the new book raises a further discussion by experts and scholars from different countries in various fields revolving around the development of the Communist Party of China and the promotion of world progress by mutual help and assistance of shared ideals between China and the rest of the world. The following are excerpts of their speeches made at a forum related to the book launch.

Robert Lawrence Kuhn

Founder and chairman of Kuhn Foundation, an expert on China and winner of the government's Friendship Award, who has been associated with China for more than 30 years and has traveled across 100 cities.

For the world to understand China, the world must understand the Party's way of thinking.

President Xi Jinping states that the CPC should be governed by standardized rules and procedures that are open to public oversight. Only by adapting continuously, focusing on real-world issues, can the Party construct a truly prosperous society that is sustainable.

The Party-led system involves effective feedback mechanisms, such as polling, to discern what people think, for example, about proposed new policies. So, even though there are no elections in the Western sense, there is a good deal of feedback from different constituencies. Another example is when officials are nominated to new positions, there is often a period of time for feedback from colleagues, subordinates and superiors.

Moreover, the work reports of Party leadership at Party congresses every five years, and the work reports of the government at the National People's Congress each year, reflect a great deal of input and suggestions from all relevant officials, experts and constituencies. These work reports are not just what top leadership puts together for form and ceremony. No-they are drafted by many teams, and feedback and opinions are solicited from numerous officials and experts; the documents circulate iteratively many times during the six to eight months or more of the drafting period.

For those foreigners who marvel at how China contained COVID-19, with so few cases and deaths compared to other countries, I point out that the common root of China's success in containing the contagious coronavirus, and China winning the war to eradicate extreme poverty, is the CPC's leadership and organizational capacity.

All political parties, all political systems, have trade-offs, and while achieving national objectives is indeed an advantage of China's Party-led system, it is not the only criterion for evaluating systems. This is why continuing reform, opening up and system improvement are needed.

"It's fair to say that we have achieved successes," President Xi said. "Nevertheless we should have a cautious appraisal of our accomplishments. We should never overestimate our accomplishments or indulge ourselves in our achievements."