Editor's note: To mark the PRC's 70th founding anniversary, our series "Straight Talk" invited experts to discuss how China's diplomacy has evolved in the last seven decades. In the seventh episode, He Baogang, professor at Deakin University, Australia, shared his insight on China's development model. The video reflects the expert's opinions, and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

CGTN: How did the idea of the China model come about?

He: To understand the Chinese model, first, we need to go back to 2008, when America had a financial crisis. The "Washington consensus" is the phrase to refer to the American model. That is America wants to promote its political idea, democracy, and free market globally.

The "Washington consensus" particularly emphasizes what they call a new economic liberal policy, that is less or even no government intervention in the economy – let the free market do whatever it wants to do.

Then they suddenly realized this model doesn't work. You know, in the United States, you have a financial crisis. But in China, they didn't have this crisis at that time.

So there is an American scholar that came up with the idea of the "Beijing consensus." The "Beijing consensus" in the opposite way, emphasizes government intervention, government management of the market; you still need a strong government.

A strong government is necessary for economic development. So that's the early stage of developing the idea of the Beijing model or the China model since 2008.

CGTN: Are there any other interpretations of the China model?

He: In the last few years, many other scholars were also discussing the different ways of understanding the China model. Today, Daniel Bell developed a different way of understanding the China model. He said the China model, put simply, is a meritocracy – that is China selects talented, competent, virtuous leaders and let those leaders run the country. So that is a meritocracy.

Leaders must be meritocratic. They are selected, not elected. If they are elected, you might not necessarily get meritocratic leaders.

CGTN: Is there any likelihood that China will transition to liberal democracy in the future?

He: China is unlikely to transform into a Western liberal democracy because China has its own long history and culture. Still, China must develop its own democracy to address the many problems it faces. So the form of democracy China has is more likely to be hybrid and mixed. There are some Western elements and traditional Chinese ones and some Chinese newly added elements.

CGTN: How can China mix Chinese and Western elements in its political system?

He: So, for example, in my paper, I mentioned two examples in my case study. One is that you have what is called "gong tui gong xuan," – public recommendation, public election. You still have a party organization selecting some candidates, but they also need to go through processes like people's recommendation, even hold a vote, and even let candidates sit exams. So there's a very complex system. In some places, it's called "san piao zhi" – three tickets system. That is to combine elections and combine leaders' selection and a knowledge test.

So that's one example. Another example concerns the decision-making process. Currently, they (Chinese political leaders) also borrow from Western practices – they call it local deliberative democracy. So in some areas in China, they introduced local deliberative democracy. (They) add this local public deliberation to the decision-making process.

More from Straight Talk series:

What shaped China-U.S. relations?

What makes China-Russia ties unshakable?

Dialogue paves way for future Sino-European relations

Quality of the bureaucracy – one of the factors ensuring China's success

China-Japan ties enter 'new era'

The historic mandate of 'Chindia'

(If you want to contribute and have specific expertise, please contact us at opinions@cgtn.com.)