9月24日，赵建总领事在领区英文媒体《芝加哥太阳时报》和《底特律自由报》发表题为“中国共产党的百年征程：始终同人民在一起，为人民的幸福而奋斗”的署名文章。
文章着重介绍百年来中国共产党团结带领中国人民为实现中华民族伟大复兴而奋斗圆梦的故事。文章指出，100多年前，为了挽救民族危亡，中国无数仁人志士、各种进步力量前赴后继，但都未能改变中华民族的悲惨命运。1921年中国共产党成立后，团结带领中国人民经过28年艰苦卓绝的奋斗牺牲，于1949年建立了新中国，彻底结束了近代以来中华民族遭受帝国主义列强侵略压迫、中国人民遭受各种反动势力欺凌奴役的苦难历史，彻底结束了旧中国半殖民地半封建社会的历史，赢得了国家独立、人民解放，为实现中华民族伟大复兴创造了根本社会条件。
新中国成立后，中国共产党带领全国人民自力更生、艰苦奋斗，用几十年时间走完了发达国家几百年走过的工业化进程，建成了世界第二大经济体，全面建成小康社会，彻底消除绝对贫困，造就了世界上人口最多的中等收入群体和规模最大的社会保障体系，居民平均预期寿命从1949年的35岁提高到2019年的77.3岁，成为国际社会公认的人民最有安全感、最有获得感的国家之一。今天，全国人民正在以习近平同志为核心的党中央坚强领导下，为到本世纪中叶全面建成富强民主文明和谐美丽的社会主义现代化国家而努力奋斗。
文章指出，中国共产党之所以能够成功，是因为中国共产党始终不渝践行为中国人民谋幸福、为中华民族谋复兴的初心和使命。近代以来，中国人民最大的心愿就是实现国家独立富强、社会和谐安定，人民过上幸福富裕的生活。一百年来，不管形势如何变化，不管遇到什么样的艰难险阻，中国共产党始终为了让人民过上好日子、为了民族的复兴而不懈奋斗，始终把最广大人民的根本利益放在心上。中国共产党带领全国人民不懈探索，开辟了符合中国国情、代表人民意愿的中国特色社会主义道路，建成了欣欣向荣的社会主义现代化国家。中国共产党领导14亿中国人民摆脱千年贫困，过上幸福安定生活。在中国人民心中，这就是最大的人权，是最成功的民主。中国共产党也因此赢得了14亿人民的信任，赢得了人民的坚定拥护和支持。
文章强调，中国共产党既矢志为中国人民的幸福而奋斗，也一直为人类和平进步事业而奋斗。中国的发展对世界是机遇，不是挑战和威胁。中国一贯主张国家不分大小、贫富、强弱，都是国际社会平等成员。新中国成立后，中国从未挑起一场战争，从未侵占别人一寸土地，也从不把自己的意志强加于人。中国始终坚持走和平发展道路，坚持互利共赢开放战略，主张全球治理应当由各国共商共建共享，大家应一起建设持久和平、普遍安全、共同繁荣、开放包容、清洁美丽的世界，共同应对各种全球性挑战，构建人类命运共同体。只要大家相互尊重、互学互鉴，和衷共济、合作共赢，就能把共同生活的这个星球建成一个和睦的大家庭，世界各国人民对美好生活的向往就能够变成现实。
One Hundred Years’ Journey
with the People and for the People
On July 1 this year, the Communist Party of China (CPC) celebrated its 100th anniversary. In the past century, the CPC has grown from a small party of about 50 members to the largest political party in the world with a membership of over 95 million. How has it made it? Why has it been able to serve as the ruling party of China with the strong and firm support of the 1.4 billion Chinese people? What is the secret of the CPC’s success?
To answer these questions, a brief review of China’s history in the modern times is essential.
China more than 100 years ago was a poor and backward semi-colonial, semi-feudal country devastated by warlord fights and repeated foreign invasions. The Chinese people suffered tremendously as a result and the very survival of the Chinese nation was hung in the balance.
To salvage the country and the nation, countless Chinese patriots and progressive forces rose up in search of ways to turn around the situation. But none of these efforts got anywhere until the establishment of the Communist Party of China in 1921, who, in the subsequent 28 years, rallied and led the Chinese people in a courageous fight for national independence and liberation. After pulling through all the difficulties and hardships and making huge sacrifices, the Party led the Chinese people to the founding the People’s Republic of China in 1949, regaining national sovereignty and dignity and putting to an end the trying history of modern China. It dismantled feudalism, ended the imperialist domination of China, and liberated the Chinese people from the enslavement and exploitation of all the oppressive forces, creating the fundamental social conditions for the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.
Under the leadership of the CPC and with the concerted efforts and hard work of the Chinese people, the New China has made remarkable success in national development. It finished within several decades the industrialization process that took the developed countries several hundred years to complete, built the world’s second largest economy, and completed the building of a moderately prosperous society in all respects. Thanks to more than 40 years of reform and opening up, China has lifted 770 million rural residents out of poverty, built the world’s largest middle-income group and largest social safety net, and vastly advanced the social undertakings from culture, education to health care, raising the life expectancy of the Chinese citizens from 35 years in 1949 to 77.3 in 2019. In 2020, China’s per capita GNI exceeded US$10,000, reaching the level of upper-middle income countries. All this has given the Chinese people one of the highest sense of security and self-fulfillment in the world. Today, under the able leadership of the CPC Central Committee with comrade Xi Jinping at its core, the Chinese people are marching with confidence towards the middle-of-the-century goal of building China into a modern socialist country that is strong, prosperous, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious and beautiful.
The secret of the CPC’s success lies in its unwavering commitment to its founding aspiration to create a better life for the people and achieve national rejuvenation. National independence and prosperity, social stability and harmony and a happy and well-to-do life have been the biggest dream of the Chinese people since the modern times. It is also the goal of the CPC in the past century. No matter what has happened and what difficulties and challenges might lie ahead, the Party has never relaxed its effort to pursue a better life for the people and realize the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, and has always put the people’s interest first along the way.
Under the leadership of the Party, the Chinese people have embarked on a path of socialism with Chinese characteristics that best suits China’s reality and represents the will of the people, and is leading China to be a prosperous modern socialist country. Under the leadership of the Party, the Chinese people have got rid of abject poverty for the first time in China’s thousands of years of history and started to enjoy a happy and secure life. To them, this is the biggest human right ensured and the best success story of democracy. This also explains why the CPC has been able to win the trust and firm support of the Chinese people. Surveys done by the Harvard University for several consecutive years have shown that over 93 percent of the Chinese people are satisfied with the performance of the Party and the government. That is the key to the CPC’s success.
While dedicating itself to the welfare of the Chinese people, the Communist Party of China has been working consistently for peace and progress of mankind. The Chinese values are deeply rooted in the traditional Chinese culture and philosophy that believe that “peace is most precious” and advocate “harmony without conformity” and “peaceful coexistence”. China maintains that all countries, regardless of their size, wealth or strength, are equal members of the international community. Since the founding of the People’s Republic, China has never provoked a single war or occupied a single inch of foreign territory. Nor has it ever imposed its will on others. China is firmly committed to the path of peaceful development and the win-win strategy of opening up, and maintains that global governance be carried out by all countries together on the principles of extensive consultation, joint contribution and shared benefits. We need to work together to meet global challenges of all kinds and make our world an open, inclusive, clean and beautiful place with enduring peace, universal security and common prosperity, so as to build a community with shared future for mankind.
China’s development is an opportunity to the world, not a challenge or threat. It is now the second largest contributor to the UN regular budget and the UN peacekeeping budget, and provides more personnel to the UN peacekeeping operations than any other permanent member of the Security Council. It has contributed over 30 percent of the global growth for many years in a row. It is estimated that China’s total import of goods will top US$22 trillion in the next decade, and its Belt and Road Initiative, according to the World Bank’s 2020 report, will help at least 40 million people around the world get out of poverty by 2030. Moreover, China is doing its best to meet its 2030 NDC targets in a joint effort with the international community to address and mitigate climate change. We believe that so long as we work together on the basis of mutual respect, mutual learning, mutual assistance and mutual benefit, we can turn our planet into a big harmonious family and translate into reality the wish of the world’s people for a better future.
Both China and the U.S. are big countries bearing special and important responsibilities for world peace and development. The development of Sino-U.S. relations in the past decades has borne out that we both stand to gain in cooperation and lose in confrontation. When China and the U.S. work together, they can make great things happen for the good of the two countries and the world; when they are locked in dispute and confrontation, however, it will definitely spell disasters for both sides and the larger world. The COVID-19 pandemic is another stark reminder that we are passengers in the same boat with shared destiny and future and that the world now needs more than ever solidarity and cooperation.
There has been a long-standing history of exchanges between China and the U.S. Midwest. Over 80 years ago, Edgar Snow, a progressive journalist from Kansas City, traveled to northwest China to interview Mao Zedong and other CPC leaders at that time. Through his narratives of the ideals and stories of the CPC, people in the U.S. and the rest of world got to know the Party and its leaders and how they had come from the people and shared weal and woe with the people. In the 1980s, Mr. Xi Jinping, the then Secretary of the Party Committee of Zhengding County, Hebei Province, led a delegation to Iowa, opening a new chapter in the sub-national and people-to-people exchanges between the two countries. Now several decades have passed. The CPC’s original aspiration to work for the welfare of the people and the rejuvenation of the nation and to promote world peace and development has remained unchanged. So has the desire of the Chinese and American people to strengthen their bonds of friendship through closer exchanges and cooperation. To promote the sound and stable development of Sino-U.S. relations on the basis of mutual respect and win-win cooperation remains in the fundamental interests of the two peoples and the common interests of the people worldwide.
