China at 70

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This was the decision for Reform and Opening Up taken after due deliberations by the 3^rd Plenum of the 11^th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China under the leadership of the visionary statesman, Deng Xiaoping, in November 1978.

To mark the 40^th anniversary of China’s Reform and Opening up Policy, The New York Times started a series of articles on November 18, 2018, beginning with the title The Land that Failed to Fail. Since the Communist Party of China launched a unique experiment of ‘socialist market economy’ in 1978, The New York Times wrote: “The West was sure the Chinese approach would not work. It just had to wait. It’s still waiting”!

The importance of the 40^th Anniversary of the Reform and Opening Up policies is in its transformative impact not just on China, but the world at large.

With China getting ready to celebrate the 70^th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China on October 1, 2019, China’s worldview in the multipolar ‘Asian Century’ is based on the twin pillars of promoting economic connectivity (through the Belt & Road Initiative, BRI) driven by energy and ecology, ports and pipelines, roads and railways, and cultural cooperation (via the Conference on Dialogue of Asian Civilizations held last week in Beijing) through forging people-to-people connectivity, particularly amongst youth, media, academia, think tanks and tourism.

What is unique about China’s remarkable transformation in a relatively short span of 70 years, that makes it a ‘role model’ in the 21^st Century?

Primarily, the success with alleviating poverty. Within a generation or so, China has lifted over 750 million people out of poverty, a feat without precedent in human history.

Changing so many lives for the better in such a short span is indeed unique. This huge success in poverty alleviation on such a size, scale and speed is what has inspired and impressed the world about the ‘China Model’.