Recently, I met with several Angolan journalist and student friends who made an exchange/friendship visit to China.
What impressed them most during their trip to China were the achievements of Chinese modernization. As everyone knows, China and African countries, including Angola, share similar historical experience.
Both China and Africa experienced dark Western colonial rule, as well as arduous struggles against imperialism, hegemony, and colonization. After the Opium War in 1840, the Chinese nation suffered a hundred years of foreign invasion and internal war.
At the same time, European powers had forcibly colonized Africa since the fifteenth century.
Based on the common experience of suffering oppression and humiliation, China and Africa always intrinsically and independently pursue equality and mutual respect among countries, equity and justice in the international order, and the democratization of international relations.
Both are opposed to hegemonism and power politics, which forms an important historical basis for the natural feeling of China-Africa closeness and trust.
We are bound by the same historical circumstances and development tasks. The Communist Party of China (CPC), born in 1921, has united and led the Chinese people through a century of vicissitudes to explore a successful path to modernization, allowing China to grow from poverty to the world’s second-largest economy.
At the 20th CPC National Congress, President Xi Jinping systematically elaborated the five characteristics of Chinese modernization on the basis of its own national conditions, namely, Chinese modernization is modernization for a large population, modernization aimed at the common prosperity of all people, modernization that coordinates material, cultural and ethical progress, a modernization that seeks the harmonious coexistence between human beings and nature, and a modernization that follows the path of peaceful development.
Chinese modernization broke the myth of “modernization = Westernization”, created a new form of human civilization, and brought important inspiration to countries all over the world, especially to the large number of developing countries, including African countries.
Firstly, the world’s largest developing country has successfully promoted and expanded modernization. As the largest developing country in the world, one of China’s basic national conditions is its huge population.
In order to solve the problem of poverty, the CPC led the people to continue to struggle and make unremitting efforts. Over the past ten years, an average of more than 10 million Chinese have said goodbye to poverty every year, a number equivalent to the population of a medium-sized country.
This not only means that the problem of absolute poverty that had plagued the Chinese nation for thousands of years has been historically solved, but it has also made a fundamental contribution to the goal and task of building a moderately prosperous society in a global way.
China has made major contributions both to alleviating poverty, which is the focus of global governance problems, and to ensuring the world’s sustainable development.
Secondly, it enriched the connotation of modernization and created a development path that was different from the Western modernization path.
The industrialization path of Western countries has always been considered a typical connotation of modernization and has long influenced the understanding and practice of modernization in developing countries.
After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the CPC diligently united and led the people in arduously exploiting China’s modernization drive, and made unremitting efforts to achieve the goals of the “four modernizations.”
After the reform and opening-up, we continued to promote the socialist modernization process in accordance with the “three-step” development strategy, and successively achieved the development goals of solving people’s food and clothing problems and making people’s lives in general reach a moderately prosperous level.
After efforts in the first two decades of this century, we have achieved the goal of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects.
China’s strategy is divided into two stages: from 2020 to 2035, we will basically carry out socialist modernization; From 2035 to the middle of this century, we will build our country into a modern, prosperous, strong, democratic, civilized, harmonious and beautiful socialist country.
Thirdly, it has increased the confidence of developing countries in their independent modernisation. Achieving modernization is the dream goal of most developing countries.
As the world’s largest developing country, China has successfully found a new path for Chinese modernization.
It is based on China’s specific national conditions, emphasizes independence in economic and social development, firmly grasps the initiative in economic and social development, and conforms to the global economic environment.
The trend of economic globalization, active participation and promotion of the process of economic globalization and integration into the world economy are not only in line with the reality of China, but also reflect the development laws of human society. As such, Chinese modernization belongs to China and the world.
The great achievements and experience in modernization in a developing country with a population of more than 1.4 billion not only prove the viability of China’s modernization path in theory and practice, but also increase the great confidence of the vast number of developing countries in the modernization drive, which provides a new option for the countries and nations of the world that want to accelerate development, while maintaining their independence.
Each country should carry out independent farms in governance based on its own national conditions, and each responsible farm should be respected.
Angolan friends know very well that China will always be an equal partner, will strengthen exchanges and dialogue on a voluntary basis and will not “import” foreign models or “export” the Chinese model.
We value learning from each other and seeking more meaningful thoughts and explorations in exchanges and dialogues.
China is comprehensively promoting the great revitalization of the Chinese nation through Chinese modernization, and Africa is making every effort to build a continent of peace, unity, prosperity and self-reliance.
We have always firmly supported each other and are willing to be a partner in Africa’s modernization path, and continue to make greater contributions to China-Africa friendly cooperation and common development and progress.
Source: O Pais