China continues its confident path toward growth and development

Editor's note: Benyamin Poghosyan, a special commentator on current affairs for CGTN, is the chairman of the Center for Political and Economic Strategic Studies in Armenia. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

The third decade of the 21st century is marked by wars, conflicts, growing inequality, and a decline in the trust of many ordinary people about their future. These trends are everywhere, in Northern and Southern America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. The global media is full of stories about great power competition, rivalry for regional domination, and current and upcoming economic crises. Climate change impacts more and more people, and disruptive new technology creates concerns about the future interactions between humans and machines.

In the current environment, people all over the globe are looking for examples of positive, human-centered development in countries that consider the needs of people and are not focused on benefiting only elites. In this context, the development path of the People's Republic of China stands out as a model that should be studied, adapted, and used.

As one of the world's ancient civilizations, China has always been the focus of other nations that study its culture, traditions, and development. Around 45 years ago, China launched its reform and opening-up, making it more accessible to the world and fostering regional and global growth.

Now, at the recently held third plenary session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), a communique on further deepening reform comprehensively to advance Chinese modernization was released. The Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee presided over the meeting. General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee Xi Jinping delivered important addresses.

"The overall objectives of further deepening reform comprehensively were to continue improving and developing the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics and modernize China's system and capacity for governance," the third plenary session decided that by 2035, China would have finished "building a high-standard socialist market economy in all respects, further improved the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics, generally modernized our system and capacity for governance, and basically realized socialist modernization." According to the communique, those reform tasks should be completed by the time China "celebrates its 80th founding anniversary in 2029."

The communique also urged deepening supply-side structural reform, improving incentive and constraint mechanisms for promoting high-quality development, and creating new drivers and strengths for realizing growth. It decided to "improve the institutions and mechanisms for fostering new quality productive forces in line with local conditions, for promoting full integration between the real economy and the digital economy, for developing the service sector, for modernizing infrastructure, and for enhancing the resilience and security of industrial and supply chains. In supporting all-around innovation, China would deepen comprehensive reform in education, structural scientific and technological reform, and institutional reforms for talent development."

President Xi Jinping's idea of building a global community of shared future is a viable alternative to the standard policies of the great powers, which are based on confrontation, rivalry, and unilateral gains. China calls on "the international community to promote partnerships, security, economic growth, inter-civilization exchanges, and building a sound ecosystem." China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative, with its emphasis on physical and digital infrastructure as a backbone of development, creates significant possibilities for growth in different areas of the world.

The impressive economic development of China during the past few decades lifted nearly 100 million people from absolute poverty. Chinese economic growth also significantly contributed to the world economy. Chinese foreign aid and investments in Africa, Latin America, and South and Southeast Asia helped boost the economic growth of those countries.       

Humanity has come to another historical crossroads as the world undergoes profound changes unseen in a century. After the COVID-19 pandemic, world economic recovery remains sluggish. Multiple challenges, including geopolitical tensions, climate change, food and energy crises, compound each other. In this environment, China has put forward the Global Security Initiative, the Global Development Initiative, and the Global Civilization Initiative as ways to promote sustainable and equal development and peaceful conflict resolution.

Meanwhile, China continues to confidently focus on its development and reform policy. The plenary communique will play a significant role in China's reform trajectory.

In 2021, China realized its first centenary goal of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects. Now, China is moving towards its second centenary goal – to build China into a great modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious and beautiful by 2049, the centenary of the People's Republic of China. As with any endeavor, the road will not be easy, but the 75-year history of the country shows that China and its people are ready to overcome challenges and realize their dreams.

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