The Communist Party of China (CPC) is scheduled to hold a high-level dialogue with the Democratic Party and Republican Party in the United States by the end of this year, a senior CPC official has said.

A U.S. bipartisan delegation has extended an invitation for the CPC to attend the event, said Li Jun, spokesman for the International Department of the CPC Central Committee (IDCPC).

The two sides will decide the details of the dialogue's agenda and timetable later, Li said.

The invitation followed the first high-level dialogue between the three main political parties when the U.S. delegation led by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former Assistant Secretary of State Richard Williamson visited China from March 30 to April 3.

"After the dialogue, Mrs Albright concluded that communication between the two parties aims to promote the mutual understanding of each other's approach to governance. She thought it helped the U.S. to obtain an overall knowledge of China," Li told China Daily in an exclusive interview.

"The political parties of various countries were confronted with similar issues and undertook similar tasks to promote national prosperity in spite of the differences of their theories of governance, therefore such dialogue is very meaningful," Li cited Williamson as saying.

Li, who is also director of the research office under the IDCPC, said the dialogue showed how communication among the CPC, Democratic Party and Republican Party has been institutionalized despite their ideological differences.

Two IDCPC officials in charge of U.S. affairs went to Denver, Colorado, to observe the Democratic Party's quadrennial national convention in August 2008. They were the first observers sent by the CPC to the Democrats' paramount meeting .

The officials went to observe the convention at the invitation of the U.S.-based National Democratic Institute.

The CPC had also maintained contact with the Republican Party before the April dialogue.

The CPC's exchange with the two main U.S. parties are part of its efforts to "make friends all around the world", Li said.

The CPC has established contacts and exchanges with nearly 600 political parties and organizations in more than 160 countries, he said.

"Given the current international situation together with globalization and the lingering financial crisis, a country's government can hardly solve a host of difficult problems alone," Li said.

"The exchanges and communication between the ruling parties and other influential political organizations on the issues concerning governance and the economy are very necessary," he said.

The CPC has also established various kinds of communication or cooperative relations with six main political groups within the European Parliament (EP) and five important parties in the European Union, as well as more than 170 parties in European countries, according to the IDCPC website.

The First China-Europe High-Level Political Parties Forum was held from May 24 to 25, with more than 50 leaders from 35 political parties of 22 European countries and two political groups in the EP convening and discussing issues, including the global financial system and climate change.

Other than the high-level exchanges of senior leaders, the CPC also directs considerable attention to the participation of younger statesmen, Li said.

Communication among future leaders is vital to the sustainable and long-term development of relations at the State level and the CPC has strived to provide platforms to younger statesmen for them to experience mutual understanding and respect for each other, Li said.

"The CPC has already transcended the limits and differences of ideologies and stretched out its hands to the capitalist parties," Li said.

"Due to the negative role that the Communist Party of the former Soviet Union had sometimes played in international affairs, a handful of Western parties once took a suspicious and fearful stance toward their relations with the CPC, fearing that we would possibly subvert their regimes," Li said.

"Another reason for such hesitation lay in the worry that they would be unsatisfactorily affected in the elections for their relations with a communist party."

"The rapid development of the CPC's relations with the two main parties in the U.S. can be seen as the direct result of the success and increasing influence that China's political model has shown to the world," said Gao Zugui, director of the institute of world political studies under the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations.

"The advantages of China's political system have been fully displayed in fighting the financial crisis and addressing a host of complicated problems, leading foreign parties to pay more attention to them, which finally bore fruit in the form of the intensified exchanges," he said.

"The department can expand the extent and the depth of its communications with foreign parties and take more diverse, flexible and effective approaches in fulfilling its duties."

(China Daily July 28, 2010)