The 100-year history of the Communist Party of China is a key to understanding China

Since arriving in Guyana, I have felt it in heart that the friendship between China and Guyana is deeply rooted and to further strengthen our co-operation is the expectation of both sides. In the meantime, I have also found that some Guyanese friends still lack a comprehensive understanding of China, or even puzzled by some myths. What exactly is China like today and what will China be like in the future? Getting to know the history of the Communist Party of China (CPC) is a key to understanding China.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of the CPC. The 19th Central Committee of the CPC convened its sixth plenary session in Be?ing from November 8 to 11, 2021. The plenum reviewed and adopted the third Resolution in the party's history, which is of landmark importance since it fully summarized the major achievements and historical experience of the CPC's 100 years of endeavors.

History is the most vivid and persuasive textbook. The Resolution has concluded systematically the CPC's major achievements in the periods of the new-democratic revolution, socialist revolution and construction, and reform, opening up, and socialist modernization, and emphasized the great achievements since socialism with Chinese characteristics entered a new era.

It has summarized the Party's valuable historical experience covering the following ten aspects: upholding the Party's leadership, putting the people first, advancing theoretical innovation, staying independent, following the Chinese path, maintaining a global vision, breaking new ground, standing up for ourselves, promoting the united front, and remaining committed to self-reform.

These historical achievements and experience have fully demonstrated that the leadership of the CPC and the road of socialism with Chinese characteristics are the choices of history and of the Chinese people. Before the founding of the CPC, China was a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society. Although China emerged as a victorious nation after World War I, its territory was traded by the other victorious nations with great powers and the Chinese nation was in peril.

The Revolution of 1911 led by Dr. Sun Yat-sen overthrew the absolute monarchy, but failed to find a way to alter the bitter fate of the Chinese people. In the end, it is only the CPC equipped with scientific theories that has been rallying and leading the Chinese people in winning national independence and liberation and walking on a path of socialism with Chinese characteristics, which ensures it is the people who run the country and realizes development and prosperity according to China's specific realities.

These historical achievements and experience have fully demonstrated that breaking new ground continuously from the combination of theory and practice and having the courage to reform itself are the secrets of how the CPC remains young and vigorous. Marxist theory is not a dogma but a guiding ideology that must develop with the evolution of practice.

The CPC has always been grasping the historical trends, China's basic realities, and the principal contradiction of its society, achieving time and time again historic breakthroughs in adapting Marxism to the Chinese context through arduous exploration, and leading the Chinese people to make great achievements of revolution and construction. In the process, although the CPC encountered failures and setbacks, it has always owned up to its errors, grounded all its efforts in reality and in the fundamental interests of the people, reformed itself, corrected its errors, and finally become an innovative party that stays at the forefront of the times.

These historical achievements and experience have fully demonstrated that Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era is the guiding ideology that should be upheld in the long-term in order to achieve the Second Centenary goal of China and the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. China has been developing the whole-process people's democracy, which is the most extensive, truthful, and effective socialist democracy. Democracy is a shared human value, not a tool to label friend or foe by any country.

The realities of different countries are various. Democracy takes different forms, and there is no one-size-fits-all model. China's whole-process people's democracy means that the people can fully enjoy their right to be informed, right to be heard, right to exercise oversight, and right to participate in the whole process.

It is not the kind of democracy that the people would only be awake at the time of voting and go back to dormant afterwards, but the kind that gives full expression to the will of the people, protects their rights and interests, and sparks their creativity. China has been applying a new philosophy of innovative, co-ordinated, green, open, and shared development, comprehensively deepening reform and continuously improving the level of modernization of China's system and capacity for governance.

China completed the poverty-eradication target of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development 10 years ahead of schedule, which created a miracle in the poverty-reduction history of human. China has been playing an active role in global environmental and climate governance and keeping its commitment to act as a responsible major country.

These historical achievements and experience have fully demonstrated that the CPC's endeavours over the past century have not only produced a profound influence on China, but also on the course of world history. For 100 years, the CPC is always an important force promoting the peace and development of the world. The victory of the Liberation War of the Chinese people has enormously inspired all the oppressed nations and peoples around the world. China successfully found its independent and unique path to development and modernization, providing a brand new practice and option for developing countries to achieve modernization.

China champions the shared human values of peace, development, fairness, justice, democracy, and freedom, promotes the important concepts of building a community with a shared future for mankind, Belt and Road Initiative, and Global Development Initiative, and offers Chinese wisdom, Chinese solutions, and Chinese strength for achieving mutual benefit, win-win, and common development for all countries instead of the zero-sum game, hostility or confrontation.

We should learn from history so as to create a bright future. The CPC will keep its original aspiration and its mission of seeking happiness for the Chinese people and rejuvenation for the Chinese nation firmly in mind, rally and lead all the Chinese people to make tireless efforts to realize the Second Centenary Goal of building China into a modern socialist country in all respects.

The CPC will also shoulder its responsibility of seeking progress for human and the common good for the world as a major party in a major country, and guide the Chinese people to join hands with the people of other countries to safeguard world peace, promote global development, unite in response to challenges, and for a better world.