Editor's Note: China Talk is a global platform where policy makers, business leaders, specialists and scholars, as well as celebrities share their China story and their perspectives on China's development. Continuity is a feature of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC). And it is one of the great strengths of China's system. David Ferguson, senior editor of Foreign Languages Press, explains from his observation on the significance of a system's continuity, and how does it work in China. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily those of CGTN.

Hello and welcome to China Talk. I'm David Ferguson.

General Secretary Xi Jinping's speech to the 20th National Congress covered all the main themes of importance in modern China – the economy, politics, society, culture, and the environment. These involve specifics such as China's modernization through technology, innovation, and upgrading, and the importance of people-centered development and whole-process people's democracy.

If I were to sum this up in one word it would be: "continuity." There were no dramatic departures from existing strategies, no grand rhetorical flourishes, no headline-grabbing soundbites. Why? Because China's political leadership does not have to buy votes by performing short-term crowd-pleasing antics that ultimately are not in the long-term interests of the country.

One of the great strengths of China's system is this continuity – the ability to learn from the past and look to the future, pilot initiatives and roll them out when they have proved successful, build long-term plans and then see them through to implementation, and above all to unite and mobilize the whole country in pursuit of key national strategies.

Xi emphasized that the main task for the CPC going forward would now be to realize the Second Centenary Goal. That goal – to build China into a country that is strong, prosperous, democratic, harmonious, beautiful, and culturally advanced – is due for delivery in 2049, the centenary of the PRC. That means China is looking forward and planning 27 years into the future. But it goes deeper than that. The first iteration of the Second Centenary Goal emerged from the 13th National Congress in 1987. That was China's political leadership looking forward more than six decades into the future.

Contrast that with the Western system. Nowadays, the most important person in a political leader's entourage is the chief of media staff – the head spin doctor. The person whose job it is to manage tomorrow's headlines, maybe even looking as far ahead as next week.

As with China's First Centenary Goal, the details of the Second Centenary Goal will be fleshed out progressively over time. The tree will grow and blossom and fruit, and the fruits will ripen and be harvested, as the years pass and the target date approaches. Clearly new ideas will emerge, new policies will be enacted, new actions will be undertaken. But that will happen within the context of a broad strategythat has already been defined. Continuity. That is the reason for confidence in China's socialist path, theory, system, and culture.  

One criticism that might be leveled at the Congress is that it lacks razzmatazz. Certainly there are none of the performative excesses that one would expect from a U.S. presidential primary event. Some critics might even describe it as dull. Is this a bad thing?

There are a couple ways to look at the issue. One obvious response is that a U.S. presidential primary event actually represents nothing but razzmatazz. It contains no more substance than a Xi Yangyang cartoon. Although given the American propensity for bloodshed, maybe Hei Mao Jingzhang would be a more appropriate analogy.

A second response might be "So what?" So what if Chinese politics are dull? Over the years I have built a strong suspicion, now bordering on certainty, that if every politician was as dull as Chinese politicians, and if every political discourse was as dull as China's political discourse, then three things would follow:

One, the world would be a far more peaceful place. Two, the world would be a far better-governed place. Three, the people of the world would be a lot happier and more prosperous, and a lot more of them would still be alive.

But there is another, more interesting aspect to the question. I see China as a video – something that is in a constant process of evolution. You can look at where China was in the past, where it is today, and where it is going. One of the criticisms I make of the Western media is that they insist on treating China as if it was a still shot from the video – and one that is always twenty or thirty years out of date. Then they examine the still shot at their leisure, looking for as many problems as they can find, documenting them in loving detail, and harping on endlessly about them. They pretend that this is all there is to China, and this is how they present China to their audiences, and this is how the people of the West are taught to see China.

You could look at the Congress in the same way. Considered in isolation, it's not a very exciting event. But it is actually only one step in a process that has been going on for seven decades, and will continue into the future. It is just one page of a story, and the story is very interesting indeed. It's a story of how a huge country in the East, ravaged by a century of oppression and twelve years of war,  poorer than Sub-Saharan Africa, got back on its feet, restored its pride, dragged itself up by its bootstraps, regained its place on the international stage, raised several hundred million people out of poverty, and built the second-largest economy in the world – soon to become the largest.

That is only a snapshot of the last seven decades, and it barely touches upon what is due to happen over the next seven. Considered in that context, whether a single Congress was interesting and whether a single speech was exciting becomes a trivial issue.

One of the elements of the Congress that received considerable coverage in the Western media – most of it negative of course – was the renewal of General Secretary Xi's mandate. From a Chinese perspective the situation looks very different. The current level of tension in international affairs is an area of major concern, with the war in Ukraine and a seeming determination on the part of the USA to export that kind of conflict to China. The situation is volatile in Taiwan and elsewhere, and it will require a cool and experienced head to steer the world through these troubled waters.

In the ranks of world leaders, no one comes close to the stature of Xi as president. Compare him with Joe Biden for example, Xi possesses a level of gravitas that his counterparts could only dream of. He has decades of experience in governance, and has led China for ten years now.

In the course of these ten years he has laid down a series of immense achievements – delivering the First Centenary Goal, for example, or the targeted poverty alleviation that has raised the last 100 million Chinese out of absolute poverty. To put that in context, only about a dozen countries in the world have a population of more than 100 million. The Belt & Road is an initiative of historic international importance – comparable to the creation of the UN or the EU. If successful, it will transform the fortunes of underdeveloped countries along its paths and beyond, and give them a new and stronger voice on the international stage, which is precisely why the beneficiaries of the existing order hate it so much.

All of this is as good a reason as any to celebrate the renewal of Xi Jinping's mandate as the General Secretary. This is not the time to be transferring the helm to a new captain, however trustworthy. This is a time for continuity in governance as well as in strategy.

Thank you.

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