Leading greener

JIN DING/CHINA DAILY

The Chinese people have stood up and are making China great again. China has moved from abject poverty to moderately high living standards. Looking forward the next big thing is to establish an ecological civilization and a beautiful China.

When 13 Chinese, a Dutchman and a Russian met in Shanghai 100 years ago to form the Communist Party of China, anyone predicting the future of today would have got extremely high odds.

The forming of the Party went unnoticed by most Chinese at the time. Few saw the First Congress as a significant event. The Party had less than 60 members. Now it has more than 95 million.

It happened at a time when China was very weak. The empire had collapsed in the 1911 Revolution. Warlords ruled most of China. The nationalists were a fairly limited group down in Guangzhou. Nearly all Chinese were poor. Life expectancy was below 30. Today, a newborn Chinese can expect to live for 78 years.

For most of human history, China was the most advanced civilization on Earth. But in the early 20th century, decades of humiliation from Western colonists and crumbling central authority had brought the nation to its knees.

It has been an enormous achievement to unify the nation, set it on the path to restoring its former glory and transform it into the world's second-largest economy. The process has filled the Chinese people with immense pride and self-respect.

The past 40 years of reform and opening-up have brought more economic development than 4,000 years of previous history. Watching China today, we easily forget that when China decided to start reforms, it was poorer than Africa.

When I visited China at the beginning of the reform era, there were no private cars, no high-speed railways, and just one subway line. Most Chinese at the time had little more than rice or noodles for dinner, lived in basic housing and wore similar clothes. Now China is among the most modern nations on the planet, a leader in high-tech and soon to be a high-income country. China has managed the fastest improvements in living standards for the largest number of people anywhere at any time in human history.

When delivering the report to the 19th CPC National Congress, President Xi Jinping accentuated two aspects of Party thinking which has been critical to this success-seeking the truth from facts and serving the interests of the people.

The Chinese culture has been shaped by its millennia-long history of floods, droughts, earthquakes and famine. Seeking truth from facts, or pragmatism, has been part of the cultural DNA of the Chinese nation. If it hadn't been so, China as a civilization would have vanished like other great ancient civilizations in human history.

When Deng Xiaoping introduced reform and opening-up to the Chinese economy, he was not saddled with rigid doctrines, but instead called the nation to stop meaningless debates, saying "black cat, white cat, whichever catches mice is a good cat". The Chinese people are still enjoying the fruits of his pragmatic policy.

"Serving the people" is a motto that predates the founding of the Party and can be traced to the time-tested belief that the people are the foundation of the state.

Pragmatism and serving the people are also the best guarantee against repeating mistakes. There were times when the CPC lost its way wading through uncharted waters. But ultimately, the CPC has demonstrated a relentless ability to learn from and correct mistakes.

The next big thing for China is to create an ecological civilization. I am convinced that a people that could bring every single citizen out of poverty can accomplish that.

The old model of "first we pollute, then we clean up" is broken. The future is about win-win--policies that are good for both the economy and ecology.

China has a solid platform for leading the world toward an ecological civilization. A recent study by Japanese Nikkei revealed that China is the world's leader in 16 out of 18 research areas for the green transition. China is also the global leader in nearly all green technologies--solar power, wind, hydrogen and new energy vehicles.

A great example of how China is leading not only in technology, but also in innovative, pragmatic practice is its River Chief System. Officials are appointed to be in charge of the protection of cross-city or cross-province rivers. It was tested and proved successful in Zhejiang province, and has since been rolled out nationwide.

At the time of the centenary of the CPC, we in the West should do more to understand China and dispel some widely-held myths.

China desires respect for its tremendous progress, and rightly so. But unlike the superpowers of the Cold War, China has no ideology to export to the world.

Few Chinese believe China's millennial tradition of a strong political center based on competence and merit, now organized in the form of the CPC, can be exported to Europe or anywhere else. We in the West would do well spending a little more time improving upon our own systems of government, a bit less on criticizing the systems of others.

If geopolitics of shared humanity were to be established, we in the West would benefit from the future progress of China. China would be able to draw upon positive lessons from our achievements in the West. When working together, only the sky is the limit.

The people of China are working hard and smart to make China great again. Working together, we can establish a global ecological civilization.

The author is president of the Belt and Road Initiative Green Development Institute and former executive director of the United Nation Environment Programme. The author contributed this article to China Watch, a think tank powered by China Daily. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.