Since its founding 105 years ago, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has kept standing at the forefront of China’s transformation, leading the country through construction to become one of the world’s foremost economic powers.
Now with more than 101 million members, the CPC is steering the country on a new journey toward modernization by building on decades of development.
What has enabled the CPC to remain vibrant and resilient for more than a century? How has it mobilized the wisdom and strength of the Chinese people to achieve such remarkable progress? And what does its governance experience reveal about effective leadership in a rapidly changing world?
People-Centered Philosophy
The CPC, since its founding, has made seeking happiness for the Chinese people and rejuvenation for the Chinese nation its mission. This commitment has remained at the heart of its governance philosophy.
Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and Chinese president, has said, “The aspirations of the people to live a better life must always be the focus of our efforts.” He also urged all party members to bear in mind that “the country is the people and the people are the country.”
Poverty alleviation has long been a priority for the Party. The hard-won achievements in this endeavor have brought real changes to numerous people struggling with poverty.
Perched at an altitude of 1,600 meters in the mountains of southwest China’s Sichuan Province, the clifftop village of Atulie’er gained nationwide attention for its rugged location. Until a decade ago, villagers had to climb zigzag rattan ladders clinging to steep cliffs to reach classrooms, markets and medical facilities.
As a nationwide targeted poverty alleviation campaign progressed, a steel ladder with handrails replaced the rattan ladders in 2016, significantly improving villagers’ daily lives. Many families were later relocated to apartment complexes in a nearby county. Since then, the village has developed tourism and cultivated agricultural specialties as new sources of income.
The transformation of Atulie’er is emblematic of China’s drive to shake off extreme poverty. After an eight-year relentless campaign, the country lifted all of its 98.99 million impoverished rural residents out of poverty by the end of 2020, eradicating absolute poverty that had long plagued the nation.
While poverty alleviation stands as a major achievement, it is part of a wider effort to improve people’s livelihoods. Over the years, China has built the largest education, social security, and healthcare systems in the world. It has also made historic progress in ecological conservation and environmental protection.
“While all countries advocate helping their people, in China, one can trace the people-centered philosophy directly to specific policy initiatives,” said Robert Lawrence Kuhn, chairman of the Kuhn Foundation.
Dennis Munene Mwaniki, executive director of the China-Africa Center at Kenya’s Africa Policy Institute, said that China’s governance focuses on designing and implementing policies that are people-centric in nature to ensure everyone can benefit from development.
Mwaniki said China’s governance practices — including its whole-process people’s democracy — offer an alternative to the Western development model, which he described as “capital-centered rather than people-centered.”
Keeping Pace with The Times
Reform has been a defining feature of the CPC in its striving to bring better lives to the Chinese people. The Party has addressed development challenges through comprehensively deepening reform, while pursuing self-reform to enhance its governing capacity.
Since the reform and opening-up in 1978, China has undergone profound transformations. Having achieved tremendous success from humble beginnings, reform efforts have now entered a “deep-water zone.” Xi once compared the remaining difficult reforms as “tough bones that are hard to chew.”
Since the 18th CPC National Congress in 2012, the drive to comprehensively deepen reform has expanded across the economy, innovation, people’s livelihoods, opening-up and governance.
Take the economy as an example. To remove barriers to a unified market and stimulate market innovation, the country has implemented the negative list approach for market access. Through successive revisions over several years, the number of items on the list has been reduced from 151 in the 2018 version to 106 at present, a decrease of about 30 percent.
In 2024, the third plenary session of the 20th CPC Central Committee adopted overarching plans to comprehensively deepen reforms and announced more than 300 major reform tasks to be completed by 2029.
As reforms have advanced into more complex stages, the CPC views full and rigorous governance of the Party as an essential guarantee. Under the banner of self-reform, the CPC has made persistent efforts to improve Party conduct, build a clean government and fight corruption.
Between December 2012 and May 2021, the CPC discipline inspection and supervisory authorities investigated 392 officials at or above the provincial and ministerial level and about 22,000 department and bureau level officials. Punishments for more than 626,500 violations of Party conduct rules were also handed down during the period.
Chayanant Tiyatrakarnchai, a Thai senator, said the CPC has not become complacent after decades in power, but has continued to strengthen itself in response to the changing times and the evolving expectations of the people.
Juvenal Quicassa, an international relations expert at the University of Belas of Angola, highlighted the CPC’s ongoing efforts to build the systems and measures to ensure that officials do not dare to be, are not able to be, and do not want to be corrupt.
“In my assessment, one of the reasons why the CPC continues to demonstrate vitality after more than a century of existence lies precisely in its capacity for adaptation, self-correction and maintenance of high levels of organizational discipline,” said Quicassa.
Exchanges for better governance
Roughly two weeks ago, British Ambassador to China Peter Wilson visited Yan’an, an old revolutionary heartland of the CPC in northwest China’s Shaanxi Province. He described the journey as “important” for gaining a better understanding of China and the CPC.
At the Yan’an Revolutionary Memorial Hall, he lingered over the old photographs and exhibits showing the life and struggle of revolutionaries of the older generation.
Wilson also visited Liangjiahe, a village where Xi lived and worked as an educated youth for seven years. He heard villagers recount what life was like in the old days and how their lives have changed, and photographed a cave dwelling that bears Chinese characters meaning “hard work” and “self-reliance” on its exterior wall.
Starting from a small party with just over 50 members, the CPC was little understood by the outside world for quite a long time. As the world has witnessed its remarkable transformation in recent decades, more and more people worldwide have shown a growing interest in China’s governance model.
Amid a wave of visits to China by foreign leaders this year, many have traveled beyond Beijing to explore the country’s development experience firsthand — in areas ranging from modernization and poverty reduction to ecological protection. Their itineraries covered robotics companies, rural communities, and Xiong’an New Area, which is dubbed China’s “city of the future.”
“China develops its own development and governance path that fits its own conditions,” differing from traditional Western-led models and offering inspiration for Global South countries to chart their own distinctive governance path, said Mwaniki, the Kenyan scholar.
Rather than advocating a one-size-fits-all model, China has emphasized exchanges and mutual learning through platforms such as the CPC in Dialogue with World Political Parties High-level Meeting and the publication of “Xi Jinping: The Governance of China” in many languages.
China’s poverty alleviation experience is also gaining traction in Africa. In Ethiopia’s Oromia Region, a three-year agricultural cooperation project launched in 2024 has delivered modern farming techniques and training to the village of Godino Jitu, where residents report a marked rise in crop yields.
“By vigorously promoting dialogue and cooperation among political parties worldwide, the CPC is playing a constructive and forward-looking role in enriching global governance practices and contributing valuable public goods to the international community,” said Adhere Cavince, a Kenya-based international relations scholar.
“In an era of global uncertainty, the CPC’s actions serve as a vital bridge, fostering trust, reducing misunderstandings, and amplifying the voice of developing countries in global affairs,” he added.
Article first published by Xinhua
