Editor's note: Decision Makers is a global platform for decision-makers to share their insights on events shaping today's world. Alessandro Golombiewski Teixeira is a former Brazilian minister of tourism and former special economic advisor to the president of Brazil. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily those of CGTN.

Xi Jinping stated at the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) that the central task of the Party is to promote the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation with the Chinese path to modernization in a comprehensive manner. In other words, China will continue to adhere to the Chinese path to modernization, contributing to a new form of human civilization and providing an inspirational path for other countries that is different from Western modernization.

As a latecomer to modernization, China has suffered from the bullying of those who were the first to achieve development and modernization. Because the West took the lead in the industrial revolution, driving dramatic changes in production relations, interaction behavior and ways of thinking, and the transformation of national history into world history, people tend to use westernization as synonymous with the modernization process. In fact, although Western modernization has driven the transformation of traditional societies into industrialized and urbanized ones, such modernization is ultimately capital-driven, in which capital (wealth) is at the center of almost everything.

It is clear, in the discussions of the 20th National Congress of the CPC that China wants to follow another path. China after a century of exploration has finally found a new type of modernization that takes the free and comprehensive development of human beings and human liberation as its fundamental value pursuit.

In recent times, some Western countries, led by the United States, have experienced frequent negative problems in the economic, political, cultural and social fields, with polarization, materialism, ecological deterioration, foreign expansion and plunder, and other ills. Capital domination is the main reason for the West's deep-rooted predicament. The nature of capitalism determines that many aspects of Western countries must follow the logic of capital domination. In essence, the nature of capital is to achieve value appreciation through movement. When the dividends of market space and technological innovation saturate at a certain stage, capitalism comes in trouble. The answer to the chaos of today's Western world can be found in this institutional predicament dominated by capital.

The Chinese path to modernization differs from classical Western modernity and postmodernity. Although modernization is a global trend and the common desire of all peoples, it cannot and should not be forced to be uniform. Due to different national conditions, history and culture, there is neither a definite modernization model nor a universal modernization standard in the world.

The effort to achieve common prosperity is one of the characteristics of the Chinese path to modernization, which has not only changed China's own destiny but also influenced the value orientation and trend of world development. Western-style modernization is centered on private ownership of the means of production, while the Chinese path to modernization is centered on public ownership and adheres to the goal of benefiting all people. This does not mean that the Chinese path to modernization is insulated from the capital, but that it accurately adjusts the relationship between capital and labor, fully utilizes and activates the civilizational side of capital under the premise of socialist public ownership and common prosperity, and serves the goal of modernization. In this sense, the Chinese path to modernization has broken through the single-choice model of Western modernization and given an alternative model centering on human beings and promoting economic, political, cultural, social and ecological civilizations in concert.

The Chinese path to modernization is predicated on the overall ideological change and interest of the people and is driven by the main aspirations of the people. The Chinese people themselves have chosen a development path in line with the Chinese reality. This people-oriented approach fundamentally distinguishes the Chinese path to modernization from Western modernization in nature.

At the same time, the practice of human modernization also shows that some late-developing countries blindly copy the standard model of so-called modernization, eventually fall into various traps and find it difficult to extricate themselves. The middle-income trap and the dependency trap have emerged seriously in many countries that followed the Western modernization path, causing serious economic and social problems, and the lessons are very profound.

In contrast, the Chinese path to modernization has enabled the country to grow stronger and brought benefits to its people, while contributing stability and hope to the world. Xi Jinping has shown in his speech that the job of achieving common prosperity and the modernization of Chinese society is not done yet and China needs to tussle with the temptation of individual capital accumulation as the West is familiarized.

It is meaningful for developing countries to be inspired by the Chinese path to modernization and join the ranks of expanding the breadth of human civilization.

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