The 19th Party Congress has set the blueprint for China’s development aspirations. Among many new terms and buzzwords is “China Solutions", but what does “China Solutions” mean to China and the world?

Propaganda or options? General Secretary of the Central Committee of Communist Party of China (CPC) Xi Jinping emphasized that China is offering its knowledge and approach to solving the problems facing mankind.

Xi said China Solutions means the path, the theory, the system, and the culture of socialism with Chinese characteristics have kept developing, blazing a new trail for other developing countries to achieve modernization. The message Xi sent is the Communist Party of China has vitality and capability rather than sheer numbers of 90 million.

Political economist Laurence J. Brahm said that throughout China’s 30 plus years of opening and reform, it has constantly looked out at the world to see what the solutions are. But it’s found again and again that the solutions are always in the room. It comes back to understanding local culture, and local mind set.

Huang Ping, Director of Institute of European Studies of CASS said that if a country with more than one billion people grows in such a short period of time from standing up, to getting rich, and to being strong, then its reference for the non-western world countries is great.

Many believe China Solutions are not only theoretical. When it comes to economics and trade, China introduced the Belt and Road Initiative. Xi Jinping cited a Chinese saying, to get rich you need to build a road first. When it comes to financial governance, China created the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). And when it comes to climate change, China takes the lead to fulfill the Paris Accord.  

“China solutions are pragmatism, based on local knowledge, culture and conditions. It’s not based on a single model; it’s a model that can respond to change and that what makes it resilient. That is a marked difference from a lot of the western views that saying there’s only one model that you have to follow,” said Brahm.

“The information conveyed by the China Solutions is the growth of confidence. First, China's unique path is already an indisputable fact; the China Solutions have already taken shape and will constantly improve. The second message is to provide alternative options and references to non-western countries that are developing. And the third message is to tell the West, do not always want to impose on others the rules of their own,” said Huang. 

Following the earlier China Model and the Chinese Dream, the China Solutions concept seems to encapsulate a message for a global influence.

Huang said China Solutions is a new concept of big diplomacy, with a global vision. In this perspective, China is no longer a unique case. China's diplomacy is no longer the traditional narrow sense of dealing only with the relationship between countries, but to seek a role in the global governance system.

While Brahm said that he doesn’t believe that China Model needs to be applied cookie-cutter fashion pattern elsewhere; however experiences of China can be borrowed and adopted. The very key in understanding is that China Solutions is pragmatic, but al‍so very flexible.

China used to say its biggest contribution to mankind is to do its own things well. But Xi’s China Solutions slogan has completely shifted the direction. And many will be watching to see how much impact this breakthrough in thinking in foreign policy will have on China’s role in world affairs.