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by H.E. Yan Xiusheng
On July 1, 2021, the Communist Party of China (CPC) celebrates its 100th anniversary. In its momentous 100-year history, the CPC, relying closely on the Chinese people, has surmounted obstacle after obstacle, and gone from victory to victory, making a great, historic contribution to the Chinese nation. Over the course of several millennia, the Chinese people created an enduring and splendid civilisation, and made a marvelous contribution to humankind.
Following the advent of modern times around 1840s, however, owing to the aggression of the Western powers and the corruptness of China’s feudal rulers, China was gradually reduced to a semi-colonial, semi-feudal society.
As the land of China was laid to waste and the people descended into misery, the Chinese nation experienced suffering of unprecedented proportions.
In 1921, at a time of unprecedented social crisis when our people were beset by domestic turmoil and foreign aggression, the CPC was born from the integration of Marxism-Leninism and the Chinese workers’ movement. Over the past 100 years, the CPC has united and led the Chinese people in unremitting struggles for national independence and prosperity as well as people’s liberation and happiness.
• Since its establishment, the CPC rallied the Chinese people and led them in a bloody, 28-year struggle, during which they defeated the Japanese imperialist aggressors, overthrew the reactionary rule of the Kuomintang, completed the new democratic revolution, and established the People’s Republic of China in 1949. This put an end to the semi-colonial, semi-feudal society of the old China, and brought about a leap forward whereby China transformed itself from a millennia-old feudal autocracy to a people’s democracy.
• After founding of the People’s Republic of China, the CPC rallied the Chinese people and led them in carrying out socialist revolution, establishing socialism as China’s basic system, eradicating all systems of exploitation, and advancing socialist construction. This laid down the fundamental political preconditions and institutional foundations for all development and progress in contemporary China.
• Since the late 1970s, the CPC has rallied the Chinese people and led them in launching reform and opening-up policy that has unleashed the creativity of ordinary people, liberated and developed productive forces, and significantly enhanced the vitality of our society, the living standards of our people, and the comprehensive strength and international standing of our country. This has blazed a new path of socialism with Chinese characteristics, formed the theoretical framework and established the system of Chinese socialism, allowing China to catch up with the times.
The great victory of the Chinese people, achieved under the leadership of the CPC put the Chinese nation, the curator of a 5,000-year-old civilisation, well on the way to modernisation, infusing new vigor into Chinese civilisation. This great victory also enabled the People’s Republic of China to captivate the world with its achievements in development, and become the world’s second largest economy in several decades.
This year, China’s battle against poverty has been fully victorious. According to the current standards, 98.99 million rural poor people have been lifted out of poverty and absolute poverty has been eliminated, which means China achieves the poverty reduction goal of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development 10 years ahead of schedule.
The CPC is a party that seeks happiness for the Chinese people and is also a party that strives for the cause of human progress. The CPC and the Chinese people have come through hardships, fully understand the preciousness of peace and the value of development, and regard the promotion of world peace and development as their sacred duty.
Since its foundation, the People’s Republic of China has never proactively provoked war or conflict, and has never invaded an inch of land in other countries. As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, China actively safeguards the international order with the UN at its core and the spirit of multilateralism. China has always been committed to political resolution of hotspot issues.
It has participated in more than 30 UN peacekeeping operations and has become the largest peacekeeping contributor among the permanent members of the Security Council. In order to promote development, China is working with friendly countries including Barbados to promote high-quality co-construction of the Belt-and-Road Initiative, which injects impetus into the global development.
For a long time, China has provided a large number of free aid and financial support to developing countries, as well as technical, personnel and intellectual support, which benefit the economic and social development and people’s livelihood in the recipient countries.
In the face of the sudden outbreak of COVID-19, under the leadership of the CPC, China not only took the lead in controlling the epidemic, but also did its best to support the global fight against the epidemic.
With limited production capacity and huge demand for itself, China has provided more than 350 million doses of vaccines to the international community, including vaccine assistance to more than 90 countries and export of vaccines to more than 50 countries.
China has announced that it will provide the first batch of 10 million doses of vaccine to the COVAX mechanism, requesting to be used in developing countries. In this regard, the Chinese vaccines will arrive in Barbados soon, escorting the health of our Bajan friends and the recovery of the Barbadian economy.
After completing the work of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects and realising the first centenary goal at the time of centenary of the CPC, the CPC will continue to unite and lead the Chinese people on a new journey of building a modern socialist country in an all-round way and march towards the Chinese people’s second centenary goal. As General Secretary of the CPC, Xi Jinping said, everything the CPC has done is to seek happiness for the Chinese people, to seek rejuvenation for the Chinese nation, and to seek peace and development for mankind.
Looking into the future, no matter how the international situation changes, China will always stand on the right side of history, play its role as a builder of world peace, a contributor to global development, and a defender of international order, to enhance the common well-being of mankind and make greater contributions to building a community with shared future for mankind!
H.E. Yan Xiusheng, is the Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China to Barbados.
