Editor's note: The 2023 Two Sessions takes place at an important junction. It's the first Two Sessions after the Communist Party of China's 20th National Congress. It's the first Two Sessions after major changes were made to China's COVID-19 pandemic management measures. How to interpret this crucial event and its results? Follow Huang Jiyuan, the reporter who's reporting on the Two Sessions from the frontline for the first time, to get a firsthand look at the 2023 Two Sessions.

The Chinese modernization is a new path, it's unique in every sense. 

If we look at the West. The Western modernization started with the Industrial Revolution. It took them more than 200 years to get to where they are today. And in that process, they went through countless wars, conquests and colonization, which were very important elements for them in accumulating wealth and acquiring labor.

China is an observer to all this and is trying to modernize at a different era, in a different manner. This is an interconnected era where peace brings prosperity. And changes in technologies provide more ways for the China and the world to avoid repeating past mistakes.

The Chinese modernization is going to be a decades-long process. The march towards modernization is done one day at a time. And that's how China will succeed – with persistence and hard work.

Full video transcript:

The 2023 Two Sessions is wrapping up and let's get to our final topic for my Huang in Two Sessions series – the Chinese modernization. First, I want to show you a screenshot. This article was published by the New York Times a week ago. Here, the Chinese modernization is about elevating "China into a technologically advanced superpower capable of standing up to Washington as a peer."

Um, like I said in the first video, the Western media likes to gossip instead of focusing on the impacts of real policies. So is Chinese modernization simply about becoming a superpower?

If we look at the West. The Western modernization started with the Industrial Revolution. It took them more than 200 years to get to where they are today. And in that process, they went through countless wars, conquests and colonization, which were very important elements for them in accumulating wealth and acquiring labor. Simply put, they fought for dominance and they forced others to work for their development.

And they had made big mistakes. Pollution, for example. The extreme air pollution in Los Angeles, the Great Smog in London were both infamous for being deadly.

Now, China is an observer to all this and is trying to modernize at a different era, in a different manner. This is an interconnected era where peace brings prosperity. And changes in technologies provide more ways for us to avoid repeating past mistakes.

So, the Chinese modernization is a new path, it's unique in every sense. First of all, China has 1.4 billion people, nearly twice the amount of European population and more than four times America's. And China is trying to modernize in less than half the time the West took while not tripping over where the West did.

Just one very simple example here: China had only just lifted the final 98.99 million rural residents living in absolute poverty out in 2021. Getting people out of poverty is important, and not an easy task. How do you keep them out of it is even more so, especially with the pandemic and the not-so-stable international environment.

Following the West's modernization logic, it'd be more industries, more productions, more development at any costs.

China is saying: "No, that's not where we want to go. We've seen what that did to you guys, we've had similar problems here before, and we are not allowing that to happen again."

Yukon Huang, Senior Associate with the Carnegie Asia Program, said that "I think the other aspect that China's been very good at is basically tapping knowledge everywhere, collectively, at the education levels, at the company levels, at the professional levels, so it's been able to draw and use that knowledge globally, more efficiently than most countries have."

As we see from this year's Two Sessions, more efforts have been channeled to boost modernization.

The State Council institutional reform, the ninth one since 1982, was approved. It coveres reforms in finance, technology, elderly care, intellectual property and big data – all modern and timely. The Ministry of Science and Technology is one of the key focuses in the reform. It will be restructured to better allocate resources to overcome challenges in key and core technologies, and move China faster toward self-reliance. It could serve as an anchor, propeller and catalyst for greater modernization.

Chinese modernization is going to be a decades-long process. Just like articles are written one word after another, the march towards modernization is done one day at a time. And that's how China will succeed – with persistence and hard work.

So, to the West, it's too early for gossiping about power. And to everyone watching this, I'll see you later.

Huang in Two Sessions Episode One: On the road

Huang in Two Sessions Episode Two: Numbers matter, but more do real benefits for people

Huang in Two Sessions Episode Three: China's neighborly friendship needs no U.S.'s 'shaping'

Series credit:

Scriptwriter: Huang Jiyuan

Video editor: Feng Ran

Executive producers: Bi Jianlu, Zhang Peijin, Wang Xinyan

Chief editor: Li Shou'en

Supervisor: Liu Ge

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