On CPC: what the West fails to see

This coming July marks the 100th anniversary of the Communist Party of China (CPC). Over the past 100 years, the CPC has managed to lead the country to achieve national independence and win a decisive battle against poverty that is unprecedented in scale and intensity, and has benefited the largest number of people in human history. Meantime, the CPC guides China towards the path of peaceful development, interacting more actively, broadly and deeply with other countries on the global stage, fulfilling its responsibilities as a major country, and offering benefits to all mankind with its success in building socialism.

British journalist and academic, Martin Jacques, published an article entitled “Why there has been an overwhelming failure to understand CPC in West: Martin Jacques” on Global Times in April, explaining that CPC has done a successful job over the past 100 years in China by rooting in Chinese society and culture.

“CPC is like no other party in the world. It requires us to rethink the very idea of what a political party is,” he said, “The CPC's extraordinary success is because it found a way during its 100-year history of combining a huge reforming capacity with a profound rootedness in Chinese society and culture.”

Chinese Citizens’ Satisfaction Rate with Government Between 2003 and 2016

A long-term Harvard survey released last year found that Chinese citizens’ satisfaction with government has increased from 86% to 93% between 2003 and 2016, the period of the study. The survey features in-person interviews with 32,000 individual respondents in total, across the socioeconomic and geographic strata of China, to gather assessment of all levels of government.

According to the statistics from the last year survey in 2016, 95.5% of respondents were either “relatively satisfied” or “highly satisfied” with the Chinese central government, a score much better than what many western governments got from their citizens. In the same year, Gallup reported in January that their latest polling on U.S. citizen satisfaction with the American federal government showed only 38% of satisfaction.

A more recent survey published by The Washington Post conducted in late April 2020 during the pandemic through one-on-one interviews online with 19,816 people from 31 provinces or provincial-level administrative regions across China shows that Chinese citizens’ trust in their national government reached an amazing 98%, reflecting that the government’s handling of the pandemic has actually enhanced its citizens’ trust in the government.

Covid-19 vaccine doses administered in China takes up roughly a third of those distributed globally.

Source: National Health Commission

With the pandemic still raging on across the globe, the Chinese government has maintained as an active part of promoting equity of the global Covid-19 vaccine distribution, while stepping up vaccinating throughout the country in response of the World Health Organization’s call. As of June 6, China had given out more than 760 million Covid-19 vaccine doses, with nearly half of those in May alone. China’s total is roughly a third of the 2.1 billion shots distributed globally, according to China's National Health Commission (NHS).

According to a report by the AP on June 3, 2021, “in the span of just five days last month, China gave out 100 million shots of its COVID-19 vaccines”. The report goes on noting that China is now doing what virtually no other country in the world can, “leveraging the power and all-encompassing reach of its one-party system and a maturing domestic vaccine industry to administer shots at a staggering pace”.

“There is a profound belief in the West that a one-party system is unsustainable because it is incapable of reform,” as Martin Jacques pointed out, “That is not born out by the history of the CPC. It has, more than any other party in the world, displayed a remarkable ability to reform.” The CPC is showing the world its way fighting against the nature of prejudice.

“China has never regarded itself as a model for others. China has never required or expected other countries to be like it. The CPC has never thought its political system should be regarded as a template for others,” the article noted, “There has been an overwhelming failure to grasp the nature of the CPC in the West.”