Chinese President Xi Jinping delivered a speech via video at the opening ceremony of the 2021 Understanding China Conference in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province on Thursday.

Our world is experiencing changes unseen in a century, said Xi, stressing that it is all the more important for us to exchange views, have more interactions and cooperation, and contribute our wisdom and strength to jointly address global challenges.

"To understand China today, one must learn to understand the Communist Party of China (CPC)," Xi said in his address.

Noting that this year marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of the CPC, Xi said the CPC united and led the Chinese people in making unremitting efforts to fundamentally change Chinese people's destiny and exert a profound impact on the course of world history.

In early November, the sixth plenary session of the 19th CPC Central Committee adopted the Resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on the Major Achievements and Historical Experience of the Party over the Past Century.

Xi said the CPC will draw strength from history, forge ahead for a better future, stay true to its founding, and rally and lead the Chinese people on a new journey toward building a modern socialist country.

The CPC remains committed to its fundamental purpose of wholeheartedly serving the people, following a people-centered philosophy of development, and promoting well-rounded human development and common prosperity for all to better meet the Chinese people's aspiration for a better life, Xi said.

The Chinese president also pledged that the CPC will unswervingly follow the path of peaceful development and opening up to the world, work for a community with a shared future for humankind and promote humanity's common values of peace, development, fairness, justice, democracy and freedom.

It will always be a builder of world peace, a contributor to global development and a defender of the international order, he said. 

The CPC will continue to strive to make new and greater contributions to the progress of human civilization and world peace and development, Xi said.

Launched in 2013, the Understanding China Conference has served as a platform for the world to understand China's development.

(Cover: Chinese President Xi Jinping delivers a speech via video at the opening ceremony of the 2021 Understanding China Conference, December 2, 2021. /Xinhua)