On September 8, the United Nations Development Programme released on its official website the latest edition of The Human Development Report. The report's researchers rated 191 countries and regions on several dimensions including healthcare, education systems and living standards. The report showed that in 2021, nine out of every 10 countries (regions) saw living conditions deteriorate. In stark contrast, China's ranking rose.
The Human Development Report has been published since 1990. From 2015 to 2021, China's ranking went up by 11 places.
In 2022, the combined impacts of multiple challenges such as geopolitical conflicts, recurring outbreaks of COVID-19, and climate change have put the world economy under pressure, and China's economy has also faced risks and shocks. However, at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland, in May 2022, many experts remained optimistic about China's economy, believing that its long-term positive fundamentals remained unchanged and its potential was strong and resilient. Gita Gopinath, the first deputy managing director of the IMF, said that China remained one of the important engines of world economic growth, and that China's economic growth would have an impact on global trade and the growth prospects of the rest of the world.
The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games concluded successfully on the evening of February 20. At a press conference on February 18, IOC President Thomas Bach praised the Chinese people for embracing the Games and providing an "experience of excitement, warmth, hospitality, and friendliness". "The closed-loop system has been a great success, with an infection rate of 0.01 percent, and it has been one of the safest places on the planet, if not the safest," said Bach."This is a great achievement…The message to the world is that, if everybody is respecting the rules in solidarity, you can even have such a great event like the Olympic Games under the terms of a pandemic."
Behind the "safe and comfortable" event was the close collaboration of everyone involved. The efficient organization, strong technological support, selfless medical staff, and the hard-working volunteers, all showed the strong governance ability of the Chinese government and its "people-oriented" principle.
The "safe and comfortable" Winter Olympics was a microcosm of Chinese social life.
Over the past two years, China has been applying a pragmatic approach in finding a balance between fighting Covid-19 and developing economy, hoping to maximize the effect of disease prevention and control with the minimum cost.
Malcolm Clarke, a British director living in China and two-time Academy Award winner for Best Documentary Short Film, said, in China, the whole nation fights as one when it wants to achieve something, which is incredible when measured with Western standards.
China is practicing democracy in its own way. The true meaning of people's democracy lies in finding the largest common ground of the whole society's wishes and demands through consultations with the people.
In China, democracy permeates people's daily life. It is down-to-earth and represents unique "Chinese wisdom".
People's participation in top-level decision-making
Just after the Chinese New Year in 2022, citizen representatives from Hongqiao subdistrict in Changning district of Shanghai started to "give their opinions to the government". It had been seven years since Hongqiao subdistrict began seeking public opinions on legislative and community affairs from representatives of citizens and institutions. As early as 2015, the Legislative Affairs Commission under the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress established the first community-level legislative contact point at Hongqiao subdistrict.
Zhu Guoping, a NPC delegate, is an intermediary of the community-level legislative contact point based at Hongqiao subdistrict. When the NPC Standing Committee was selecting contact points for community-level legislation in Shanghai, it was she who strongly recommended Hongqiao subdistrict. The Gubei community under the subdistrict is home to residents from more than 50 countries and regions, perfectly representing Shanghai as an "international community".
Behind a community-level legislative contact point are more than 310 intermediaries coming from all walks of life. The contact points cover 16 neighborhoods and 50 institutions within the subdistrict. Once the intermediaries receive their survey questions, they solicit opinions from the public through letters, interviews, and forums. For every new draft of law, at least four forums are held.
The community-level legislative contact point has become a "direct access" for people to participate in legislation. "With the establishment of the contact points, the NPC Standing Committee can directly hear the real community voices. Many of the suggestions made by residents are adopted. We listen to the people's voices, meet their demands, and protect their rights and interests. This is a big step forward in our legislation," said Zhu Guoping.
Connected at one end to China's supreme state authority and the other to the community, the legislative contact point is a good example and a microcosm of advancing whole-process people's democracy.
According to the Legal Affairs Commission of the NPC Standing Committee, the first four community-level legislative contact points were established in 2015. The figure rose to 10 in 2020 and 22 in 2021, covering 21 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the Central Government).
Driven by practices at the national level, legislative contact points set up by local governments have increased, greatly promoting the depth and breadth of public participation in the national legislation. By August 2021, the community-level legislative contact points of the NPC Standing Committee had solicited more than 6,700 opinions and suggestions on 115 draft laws and annual legislative plans.
Community-level legislative contact points form a closed loop of the democratic decision-making process—they widely mobilize and inform the public of legislative motions in advance, serve as a platform for community opinions to be fully expressed during the legislative process, and provide timely feedback afterwards. They reflect China's whole-process democracy.
Chinese democracy is about 'being heard and responded to'
"The intersection of Gaoqiao Road and Guangda Road became an east-to-west one-way street on March 25, and the length of the green light was shortened to 20 seconds. The change is causing congestion due to the heavy traffic in front of the Civic Service Center." At 5 pm, March 28, 2018, Chen, a citizen of Fuzhou city in Fujian province, logged on to the 12345 Civic Service Platform and suggested that the duration of the traffic light should be extended.
On the evening of the same day, his suggestion was forwarded by Fuzhou's smart management service center to the traffic police detachment of Fuzhou Public Security Bureau. The next day, the traffic police responded by extending the traffic light length to 40 seconds.
The case got processed on the day it was submitted and was closed on the day after. "The solution to a problem can be as simple as that," said Chen.
Fuzhou 12345 Civic Service Platform is a government public service system to which the CPC Fuzhou municipal committee and the Fuzhou municipal government have devoted great efforts. It integrates administrative services, life services, and non-emergency guided services. The platform operates around the clock throughout the year, allowing citizens to ask questions, file complaints, offer suggestions, and seek help through more than 10 channels, including website, telephone, WeChat, and QQ. In 2017 alone, the platform received 439,000 public requests, of which 99.97 percent were processed in time and 99.79 percent received a "basically-satisfied" rating from the public, ensuring that everything had a solution or an answer.
Handling public complaints was once considered by many as a huge headache. In Gansu province, "He Yudong" made a meaningful attempt to solve this problem. "He Yudong" is the pseudonym used by Huo Jinman, the head of the He Yudong Center for Addressing Disputes in Tianshui city, Gansu province. In 2009, Huo accidentally found that a local website had opened a message board where people could leave messages to the CPC municipal secretary and the mayor. According to him, many of the messages were not to the point, and some people did not know the right process for filing a complaint.
Since then, He Yudong has been active on local online forums. In a space of three years, he posted more than 1,000 replies, giving his analysis of the issues people were complaining about. He won the recognition of many people with his logical analysis and objective attitude. Sometimes, people with appeals consult him, and he will pay a visit in person to verify their case and then speak for them.
Huo Jinman thus became a volunteer supervisor of the CPC Commissions for Discipline Inspection in Tianshui city and Maiji district. He said, "The message board is an open platform for administrative affairs. As people post their messages on the board, they put their concerns in broad daylight. It brings shame on those who don't address people's concerns properly."
Democracy begins with the full expression of the people's will and is realized with the effective fulfillment of their demands. The extent to which the people's interests are effectively realized indicates the quality of democracy.
Wu Hao, a post-95 man working in Xuhang town, Jiading district, Shanghai, has submitted his suggestions 31 times through the letterbox for public opinions. In May 2021, his "Suggestion on Actively Involving the Public in the Draft of a Well-Conceived 14th Five-Year Plan" was adopted and approved by Shanghai's municipal leaders.
Wu Hao said that although in recent years, the rural environment has greatly improved, the rural residents' living conditions weren't good, and people weren't able to build new houses as they wanted. Wu added that the policies regarding the use of homestead should be not only strict but also people-oriented. The residents' reasonable needs should be given due consideration.
Wu's ideas were echoed by Gu Chunfeng, secretary of CPC general branch of Jianghai village, Nanqiao town, Fengxian district, Shanghai. Gu said that in 2020, over 1,000 residents of Jianghai village expressed their need for house renovation. According to him, homestead "is not only the most important asset in farmers' hands, but also a leverage for us to overcome the bottleneck of rural development. It is important that we take full advantage of this asset legally and appropriately."
Statistics show that since 2012, a total of 193 draft laws have been submitted for public consultation, and about 1.1 million people have offered more than 3 million opinions and suggestions, many of which have been adopted. The people's expectations, hopes, and demands have a place to be expressed, to be heard, and to be listened to with feedback, and that is what democracy is all about.
In March 2021, the Fourth Session of the 13th NPC adopted The Decision on Amending the Organic Law of the National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China, and "upholding the whole-process democracy" was written into the law. This meant that everything from legislation to the smallest neighborhood issues could be resolved through democratic means. This also meant that the "whole-process democracy" engaged all people into the democratic process. The people participate in both the management of state and social affairs and that of economic and cultural undertakings; they play a role in both the solicitation of opinions and proposals for top-level design of national development and the governance of local public affairs; they engage in both democratic elections and consultations and democratic decision-making, management, and supervision; they express their will through both channels such as the NPC and the CPPCC and social organizations, networks and other platforms.
Practices in different parts of China prove that the complete institutional procedures and practices of participation have made whole-process democracy an institutional form, a governance mechanism, and a way of people's life of Chinese society.
China's pursuit of 'high-quality democracy'
On December 4, 2021, China's State Council Information Office released a white paper titled China: Democracy That Works. The document pointed out that China's whole-process people's democracy is a model of socialist democracy that covers all aspects of the democratic process and all sectors of society and that it is a true democracy that works.
In October 2019, Yukteshwar Kumar, deputy mayor of Bath city in the United Kingdom, visited Changle village, Xiadong township, Chalin county, Hunan province, where he understood the significance of people's full participation in governance. He said that after the implementation of precise poverty alleviation, the villagers' committee organized forums with village representatives to develop poverty alleviation measures one-on-one based on the specific situation of each area and household to solve their problems, fully promoting community-level democracy and mobilizing public participation.
According to Daryl Guppy, Australia-China Business Council NT Branch president, from political party consultations involving major national policies to community-level consultations about people's daily life, China is expanding the channels of consultative democracy and promoting democratic institutions and practices throughout people's lives.
"China's democratic practice integrates process-oriented democracy with results-oriented democracy, procedural democracy with substantive democracy, and direct democracy with indirect democracy, to truly address the issues that the people want to resolve."
Zhang Shuhua, director of the Institute of Political Science at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said: "Compassion for the people, efforts to rally people's strength, and the development of people's livelihood constitute China's real democracy. China's view of democracy will strike a chord with more countries around the world, especially developing countries."
China has built the world's largest social security system, with more than 1.3 billion people covered by basic medical insurance and 1 billion people covered by basic pension insurance. The country has successfully built a moderately prosperous society in all respects, and its people have completely shaken off absolute poverty and are heading towards common prosperity.
UN Secretary-General Guterres praised China for its important contribution to global poverty reduction.
Wang Linggui, vice-president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that the historic solution to absolute poverty, which has plagued China for more than five millenniums, has been unseen in human history. "The UN has a 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, and our country is 10 years ahead of the timetable set by the UN," said Wang.
The Chinese system has proved to be remarkable in getting things done for China's 1.4 billion people. It has given the country vigor and vitality, allowing the Chinese society to show a vivid picture where democracy and centralism, and dynamism and order coexist, and promoting the continuous development of China's economy and society.
"The paths to happiness are not all the same, and all peoples have the right to choose their own development path and institutional model. The right of choice itself is integral to people's happiness. Whether a country is democratic or not is to be judged by the people of that country."
Dmitry Novikov, deputy chairman of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party, said that China puts the people first and that "whole-process democracy is a high-quality people's democracy."
China's democracy puts the people first
As of October 9, a total of 343,751,000 doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered across China's 31 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the Central Government) and the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps. China ranks first in the world in terms of the number of vaccines administered and the population of people vaccinated.
Temporary vaccination sites that operate 24 hours a day have been set up in many Chinese cities, making vaccines more accessible to the public. The cost of vaccines and vaccinations in China is completely covered by the health insurance funds and other administrative funds, and people are enjoying "universal medical services".
Vaccination is just one aspect of China's improving social security system. As of the end of 2020, China's basic medical insurance coverage had exceeded 1.36 billion people, with a stable insurance participation rate of over 95 percent. Almost every Chinese person is covered by the universal healthcare system, the largest one in the world, with 90 percent of families able to reach the nearest medical point within 15 minutes and life expectancy per capita increasing from 74.8 years to 78.2.
Making healthcare and medicine affordable to farmers is a major strength of China's healthcare policy.
"Some years ago, I had to treat 95 percent of my patients by making house calls by motorcycle. Every day, I would ride more than 50 kilometers on mountain roads, and my motorcycle broke down several times."
He Xinglong, a doctor in Letang village, Xujiazai township, Da'ning county, Shanxi province, said: "Now life is much better. The county has built and expanded 75 clinics in less-developed villages, recruited 42 village doctors, and grants each one of them a monthly subsidy of 1,000 yuan. The policy not only keeps the village medical staff stable, but also makes it more convenient for villagers to see a doctor."
He Xinglong's village, Letang, is located on the east bank of the Yellow River, with non-arable land and more than 140 families scattered on a 10-kilometer-long hillside. Most of the village's young people are working in cities, leaving behind mostly women, children, and the elderly.
Da'ning county, where Letang Village is located, was once an impoverished county in Shanxi, which was just lifted out of poverty not long ago. In order to address more than 50,000 rural residents' need for seeing a doctor, the county has made great efforts to make full use of poverty alleviation funds, equipping each village with a standardized clinic. He Xinglong's clinic was also upgraded, being equipped devices such as an ECG, an all-in-one health machine, a blood pressure meter, and a remote consultation device.
"With a medical insurance card in hand, everyone in the countryside now can afford to see a doctor," He Xinglong told China Youth Daily. "In recent years, the rural medical situation has improved. With the remote consultation system, I am able to conduct online communication and consultation with experts from Peking University Third Hospital and other top hospitals. I can also contact a good urban hospital in time, so that villagers can go there for further treatments.
"No winter lasts forever, no spring skips its turn. We are with you." At 3 pm on February 12, 2020, Wei Ben, a young volunteer, broadcast her first message after arriving at Cabin Hospital in Zhuankou, Wuhan.
Wei Ben is from CCCC SHEC Construction Engineering Company Limited and is a Chinese Youth League branch committee secretary. After Zhuankou Fangcang Hospital broadcast the call on young people to join and help, Wei Ben immediately signed up.
In the disinfectant-filled office of the hospital, Wei Ben devoted herself to operating the broadcasting station from 8:30 am to 5:30 pm every day. Wei Ben said that every day she would be touched by the heart-warming things happening at the hospital.
From the first day of the volunteer service to the closure of the hospital, young volunteer Wu Zhengliang was never absent for a single day. On days when tasks were urgent, he would work more than 12 hours, walk more than 20,000 steps, and make more than 60 phone calls for working communications.
Before starting his service in the fangcang, or makeshift hospital, Wu was following the notices of the CYL district committee on a daily basis and offered generous help. However, volunteering in the hospital was a totally different challenge. "Compared with other volunteer service points, the risk of infection was much higher at the fangcang."
But he did not hesitate. "When the country and the people are in danger, we should go where we are needed the most," said Wu Zhengliang with pride.
Du Bin, 32, is a project manager of China Construction and Installation Group Co. When COVID-19 first broke out, he arrived at the construction site immediately after receiving the task of building the Leishenshan Cabin Hospital in Wuhan, where he was responsible for material coordination and logistics management.
"If not us the young people, who?" When Du Bin first arrived in Wuhan, he still felt nervous, but that emotion was soon swept away by the scene of nearly 10,000 people working together. "I think we share the same goal—to complete the construction of the hospital as early as possible so that the patients can recover as soon as possible."
With a few hundreds of calls to make every day, even two phones quickly ran out of their battery within half a day despite being charged by power banks. Du Bin walked more than 30,000 steps per day, which he refers to as the "Pace of Wuhan". He said, "I'm just doing what a builder should do."
After the COVID-19 emerged, young Chinese from all walks of life volunteered to engage in the fight against the epidemic—catering company managers, deliverymen, engineers, university students, and baristas all became volunteers. The humanitarian spirit and solidarity they demonstrated in the fight deeply touched the UN Secretary-General's Youth Envoy Jayatma Vikramanayake. She found that youth and youth organizations around the world have used their expertise, creativity and compassion to inspire, support, uplift, and connect more of their peers, showing the beauty of humanity. "We will finally get through this crisis." She said that history will also bear witness that it is the world's young people who have helped build the bridge from fear to hope, from confusion to clarity.
In young people such as Du Bin, people see that the interests of the people are above everything. The Communist Party of China always puts the people first, has the people in its heart, and always represents the fundamental interests of the overwhelming majority of Chinese people.
In China, the people enjoy broader, fuller, and more comprehensive democratic rights. China has promoted fuller and higher-quality employment, built the world's largest education system, social security system and healthcare system, and vigorously improved people's living standards and the quality of their living environment.
In April 2022, China's State Council Information Office released a white paper titled Youth of China in the New Era. The document pointed out: "As fairness and justice in society have steadily improved and people's rights and interests have been effectively safeguarded, young people in China in the new era can grow and prosper in a better legal environment and enjoy stronger policy support, more reliable social security, and greater care from a range of organizations."
China's inclusive social security services have been further developed. Young Chinese can enjoy the protection of the social security system from day one of their career, and be free from concerns of all types as they work hard for better life. They can live comfortably, work without worries, and feel secure about their future. The government has introduced a series of policies to support flexible employment through multiple channels, gradually improving social security for flexible employees and supporting young people to engage in flexible employment. Housing security for young people is increasing, and more major cities are increasing the supply of subsidized rental housing for new citizens and young people to make housing easier. Basic pension insurance has been aligned at the national level, and unemployment insurance and work injury insurance have continued to expand coverage on young workers, lifting social security for young people to a new level.
People's happiness is the greatest human right. This is the ultimate secret to China's achievements: exercising power for the people, showing concern for them, and working for their interests. These are what the Communist Party of China has been adhering to.
COVID-19 outbreak becomes a litmus test for democracy
No one could have ever predicted that the sudden outbreak of COVID-19 should become a litmus test for democracy.
On January 18, Edelman, the world's largest PR consulting firm, released the 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer. According to the report, China's public trust in government in 2021 was as high as 91 percent, up by 9 percentage points year-on-year, ranking first in the world. In terms of the country's overall trust index, China ranked first in the world with a high 83 percent, up by 11 percentage points year-on-year.
Not only in 2022, but also in 2017 and 2018, the Chinese people had the highest trust in the government among all countries surveyed in the Edelman Trust Barometer. China's success in containing COVID-19 and its active role in helping other countries around the world to fight the epidemic boosted the confidence of the Chinese people and people from other countries in the Chinese government, according to Edelman's CEO.
At the end of 2021, the Afrobarometer, a leading African polling organization, released a report showing that China's influence in Africa ranked first, with 63 percent of respondents saying that China's political and economic influence was "very" or "relatively" positive and 66 percent of respondents considered China's political and economic influence in Africa to be positive.
According to a 2020 survey of people in the United States, Germany, and France conducted by the German Marshall Fund of the United States, the Bertelsmann Foundation, and Institut Montaigne, COVID-19 led more Westerners to view China as a "top power". Before the outbreak, the United States was considered the most influential country in the world, with China and the EU almost tied for the second place. Today, China's influence has increased significantly.
Martin Quencez, deputy director of the German Marshall Fund, said that before the COVID-19 crisis, China's influence on the world was an abstract concept. However, the influence becomes very concrete when you think of the expectations for Chinese masks and medical equipment. Quencez said that the "new impression" of China among people in all countries will have a lasting impact—a change in perception that crosses generational and political boundaries.
Meanwhile, the United States, which prides itself as a "beacon of democracy" and a "model of democracy," has revealed many systemic problems during the epidemic, which have cast doubt on its "democratic credentials".
Late last year, a survey of young Americans conducted by the Institute of Politics at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government revealed that most young Americans under the age of 30 were concerned about the future of American democracy, and only 7 percent of respondents believed the US democratic system to be "healthy". Among young Americans aged between 18 and 29, 55 percent of the respondents believed the future of the United States to be a cause for concern.
Such data shows that American politicians' superiority complex with its democracy has not translated into young Americans' confidence in the US system—more than half of the American young people no longer trust "American democracy". John Della Volpe, director of Polling at the Institute of Politics at the Kennedy School of Government, said: "Young Americans are sounding the alarm. When they look at the America they will soon inherit, they see a democracy and climate in peril — and Washington as more interested in confrontation than compromise."
Diao Daming, an associate professor at the School of International Relations of the Renmin University of China, told China Youth Daily that young Americans' dissatisfaction with their country's politics results from the combination of multiple problems in American society, such as money politics, identity politics, party rivalry, political polarization, social tearing, gun violence, racial conflicts, and the division between rich and poor. Many long-standing social problems have affected the development of young Americans and their expectations for the future.
Since 2020, the US economy and society have been hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic and other shocks. Campuses were forced to be shut down, making young people one of the groups most visibly hit by the economic hardship.
According to the US Census Bureau, the official US poverty rate in 2020 was 11.4 percent, with 37.2 million people living in poverty; the poverty rate for people under 18 years old rose from 14.4 percent in 2019 to 16.1 percent in 2020. A Pew Research Center report released in July 2020 showed that in the United States, which advocates the independence of children, 52 percent of young people chose to live with their parents, reaching the highest percentage since the Great Depression a century ago. Although this figure fell slightly in 2021, it was still much higher than the level before the 2008 Financial Crisis.
The Atlantic Monthly commented that the lack of bipartisan consensus was one of the key reasons why the Biden administration had had difficulty moving forward with executive action on issues concerning the youth. Political polarization is growing in the US, causing the young people to be increasingly split into opposing camps that support different political parties. A survey by the Institute of Politics at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government revealed that a quarter of respondents believed that they would see the United States divided in their lifetimes.
China adheres to its own path to democracy
At the end of last year, the US launched a "Summit for Democracy", which was widely criticized by the international community. Negative reports about US-style democracy emerged, with many governments, research institutions, experts, and public figures speaking out in condemnation, and some countries rejecting US invitations to participate.
"The track records and reputation of the US, the UK and EU member states in defending the so-called democratic rights and 'freedoms' in their own countries or the international community have been very unsatisfactory." The Russian Foreign Ministry bluntly stated that the United States and its allies cannot and should not claim to be "beacons of democracy" because of their own numerous persistent problems with freedom of expression, electoral systems, corruption, and human rights.
In the The Global State of Democracy 2021 annual report, the Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (International IDEA) listed the United States the US as a country of "democratic backsliding". The report said: "The United States...fell victim to authoritarian tendencies itself, and was knocked down a significant number of steps on the democratic scale."
A poll released by the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University on December 1, 2021, showed that while the US was convening a "Summit for Democracy", 52 percent of young Americans had lost or were losing faith in the US democratic system; 39 percent believed that US democracy was "in trouble"; 13 percent said it was a "failed democracy".
The US convened the so-called "Summit of Democracy" to hide the fact that its domestic governance had failed, to divert domestic conflicts in the name of democracy, and to draw in allies to criticize China's "democratic deficit". Such is typical double standards, a common tactic used by Western countries. For example, Paul Hodgkins, a 38-year-old resident of Florida, was sentenced to eight months in prison for his involvement in the storming of the US Capitol, while Belarus was accused of "trampling on democracy" for detaining those who illegally entered the country's Parliament building.
Perhaps that is why Russians from all walks of life told Sputnik that the values invented and imposed by the West should not be a guide to democracy in China.
Eduard Risovsky, 26, a well-known blogger and advertising agency manager from Moscow, said that no matter how hard the West promotes its values, Chinese people do not believe that "the moon is fuller in foreign countries" because they are seeing the world with sober eyes. "There is a Russian proverb that speaks for itself—"От добра добра не ищут?", which means that you should not look for happiness elsewhere."
Aksana Klimovtsova, an entrepreneur from the Russian city of Belgorod, said that citizens have confidence in their country's political institutions and ideology when the economy is progressing by leaps and bounds and everything is getting significantly better, as is the case in China. She said, "The number of political parties cannot be taken as a sign of democracy. There are countries with dozens of parties without the slightest sign of democracy.
China's path is the choice of the Chinese people and should be respected."
"There is no doubt that the vast majority of Chinese citizens have trust in the Communist Party of China. The reasons are self-explanatory. Everyone sees that their lives are changing." Zaira Bugulova, an ophthalmologist in the Russian city of Vladikavkaz, said, "People understand that at the heart of all the positive changes is the Communist Party of China, and people put trust in the Party. The whole world saw the extent of this trust during the Covid-19 pandemic. As a doctor, I can say that it was the residents' absolute implementation of the government's directives that helped China contain the outbreak earlier than other countries."
One needs to remove tinted-glasses to understand China
Bugulova's statement that "the vast majority of Chinese citizens have trust in the Communist Party of China" has been confirmed by public opinion polls in various countries.
In May 2020, a poll conducted by the China Data Lab at the University of California, San Diego's School of Global Policy and Strategy showed that over 90 percent of the Chinese people supported the government leaders during the Covid-19 outbreak.
On May 5, 2021, Gary Wu, a professor of sociology at York University in Canada, wrote in an article on the Washington Post website that Chinese citizens' trust in the Chinese government had increased to 98 percent and they "increasingly trusts all levels of government". 49 percent of those surveyed said they had become more trusting of the central government since the outbreak began.
The World Values Survey, a global survey of public values conducted by the World Federation of Social Science Networks, showed that in 2018, 95 percent of Chinese people had "great trust" in the Chinese government. That showed that this trust had withstood the test of time and had never faded as Chinese people have walked alongside their government.
"Why do the Chinese trust their government so much?" "Why do the Chinese trust their government when people in other countries have a hard time trusting their government?" Some people raised questions like these on Quora after seeing figures in a global trust survey which showed that Chinese respondents' trust in their government continued to grow. Under such topics, there would always be replies from international users who cited facts, figures, and the Chinese government's track record.
Below are some of the highlights of the replies: "The Chinese government is not acting for the privileged few, but for the best interests of the people." "I have gained many insights in China. Since reform and opening up, the Chinese government has made remarkable achievements." "The Chinese government has worked hard, efficiently, and adeptly to improve the lives of its citizens, helping to lift hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and hunger by providing them with decent housing, daily necessity, and education." "The Chinese government is much more reliable when it comes to disaster relief!"
Horst Poldrak, a German scholar of the history of philosophy and science, told The Elite Reference that the West has failed to understand the Chinese model and the reasons behind China's achievements because it is trapped by its own values.
He said: "The modernization of Chinese society is a great surprise and challenge for the capitalist-dominated world, because the current situation in China shows that economic prosperity, high-tech development, and growing wealth can happen under a completely different system, and that these results have already been achieved."
"Instead of becoming what the West wants it to be in its rapid modernization, China has been maintaining an alternative model, pursuing a path of development different from the West. Under the leadership of the CPC, economic prosperity and individual wealth can be integrated. The modern Chinese society is not governed by a leadership group that governs everything, decides everything, and shapes everything. It has been proven that Chinese citizens also participate in shaping Chinese institutions."
The Chinese society differs from the Western society because of its cultural and historical background, Dr Poldrake noted. "The question is not how many political parties are in power, but how they are organized... The Communist Party of China has open arms to all sectors of society."
"We have to remove our Western tinted glasses to see how the Chinese society works effectively," said Dr Poldrake.
