Preface

China’s peaceful rise is both a miracle and a hot topic around the world.

At the CPC in Dialogue with World Political Parties High-level Meeting held in Beijing from November 30 to December 3, 2017, political party leaders, experts, scholars, and journalists across the globe kept asking the following question during a series of dialogues and visits: What is China’s secret of success?

Ahmed Karam, Deputy Secretary-General of Nation’s Future Party of Egypt, visited more than a dozen provinces and cities in China and was deeply impressed by the country’s development achievements. He said at the meeting that China had risen from an economic backwater to the world’s second largest economy, living proof of the outstanding leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the unity of the Chinese people. The CPC united the Chinese people, translating their will into assiduous efforts to achieve the ultimate goal of building a stronger and more prosperous country.

Lin Tengrootenhuysen, Vice President of the Belgium-China Association, and her younger sister co-founded China Vantaag (China Today ) , a Flemish-language magazine that has been around for 35 years. Over the past decade or more, they have visited China almost every year to do interviews. At the meeting, Lin said, “China’s rapid development is inextricably linked to the outstanding leadership of the CPC. It has managed to turn China – a formerly poor country with a large and growing population – into the world’s second largest economy as the main driving force behind the global economic growth. Therefore, the CPC’s ideas of governance and practical experience not only provide a model that many developing countries should follow, but also are relevant for developed countries.” “The CPC has successfully governed the world’s most populous country while tackling the most complicated contradictions and challenges. However, it has the courage and political wisdom to continuously push forward reform, thus having acquired the world’s admiration, ” she added.

According to Kim Jin-ho, a professor at Dankook University in South Korea, the CPC has always sought truth from facts while innovating and deepening reform based on evolving circumstances, thus being able to maintain strong flexibility and vitality. The practical experience of reform and opening up under the CPC’s leadership can, therefore, offer a model for other developing countries.

Wilson Lee Flores, a commentator on current affairs of The Philippine Star , also points out that China’s poverty reduction achievements over the past 40 years offer a vivid lesson for all countries, demonstrating that strong leadership is essential to the successful implementation of reform and opening up as well as long-term strategic plans.

The comments made by these politicians, experts, scholars and journalists are fair and reasonable. It’s true that China’s success is closely related to the outstanding leadership of the CPC.

China still has many shortcomings – unbalanced and inadequate development in particular – that prevent it from fully satisfying people’s ever-growing needs for a better life. In spite of that, its miracle has still prompted insightful people to ponder. This book unravels a mystery garnering substantial interest: How has the CPC managed to govern China, a country with nearly 1.4 billion people, and made such great achievements? It is therefore entitled Running a Big Country: Perspectives on the Communist Party of China’s Approach to Governance.

The structure of this volume logically resembles a “circle”. The first part starts with “running a big country as you would cook a small fish”, a famous quotation from Chinese philosopher Laozi, illustrating that the CPC has made it clear that the overall goal of deepening reform in every field is to improve and develop the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics and modernize China’s governance system and capacity for governance – the starting point of the “circle”. The last, or the fifth, part represents the end of the “circle”, illustrating that the CPC is, in the process of reform, improving and developing the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics, while building a corresponding governance system of democratic centralism. Apparently, the whole logic naturally returns full circle. In other words, the CPC is committed to fulfilling a clear goal in governing such a big country. In particular, it explores better approaches while running the country, in an effort to build a governance system based on the prevailing national conditions. In its philosophy of governance, the CPC rejects neoliberalism without blindly following neo-authoritarianism; instead, based on China’s prevailing conditions, it has been upholding the strength of democratic centralism, and committed to overall leadership over bodies of state power, the market and society, while promoting a combination of democracy, rule of law and rule of virtue, in pursuit of a strong and prosperous country.

In the book’s logical “circle”, the second, third and fourth parts center around the overall goal of improving and developing the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics and modernizing China’s system and capacity for governance. These sections illustrate that, while running China, a big country with a huge population, the CPC has duly tackled the three basic issues of “who’s to govern”, “what to govern” and “how to govern”. The second part deals with “who’s to govern” by stressing that the CPC has remained committed to a people-centered approach to governance, with the people led by the CPC playing a principal role in governance. The third part examines “what to govern” by illustrating that, to govern such a big country with so many things to tackle, it all comes down to paying attention to development, reform and stability, along with properly handling the dialectical, interlocking relationship between the three elements. The fourth part looks at “how to govern” by emphasizing that governing such a big country requires the commitment to the organic unity of Party leadership, the people running the country, and law-based governance, which is a natural element of socialist political development and also a secret of China’s socialist democracy.

As people often say, “The key to decoding China is to understand the Communist Party of China.” This book is intended to offer the reader a glimpse into the CPC’s approach to governance so that they’ll realize that the historic changes in China are not accidental.