Robert Lawrence Kuhn, chairman of the Kuhn Foundation and recipient of the China Reform Friendship Medal, delivered a speech on Wednesday at the closing session of the International Forum on Democracy: Shared Human Values.

Kuhn focused on what China calls its "whole-process people's democracy" – a mysterious phrase to Westerners, who assume that China's political system, which has neither multiple parties nor general elections, can be in no way democratic. He pointed out that the common root of China winning the war to contain COVID-19 and eradicating extreme poverty is the CPC's leadership and organizational capacity. This remarkable parallelism is a probative insight into China's Party-led governance system.