An employee at a poverty relief workshop in Dongxiang Autonomous County, Gansu Province, on May 14 (XINHUA) 

The astonishing transformation of China—its economic prowess, its rapid urbanization without slum cities, its scientific and technological prowess, the education of its vast population, its modern infrastructure which is the envy of much of the world, and its continually evolving pattern of governance that has enabled all these developments—has of course all occurred under the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC). 

The unprecedented accomplishments that China incessantly rolled out all required the vision, skill, staying power, and constant transformation of the CPC itself. They demanded the continual summing up of its experiences, and what polls suggest is popular support for the CPC's leadership—little of this can be viewed objectively or approached with an open mind in the U.S.

Obligatory objectivity 

Part of the problem, even among those open to a more accurate and sensitive understanding of China, lies in how the CPC is like no other political party in the world—and that its accomplishments are a reflection of this. As the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once said, the "limits of our language are the limits of our world." Washington well understands that who rules the words often fashions what is seen and how it is judged. The critical need for the effort to find different concepts, frameworks and keywords, in China and elsewhere, to challenge those often limiting and imprisoning theories and words reflective of Western centrism, remains to this day.

Their absence in discussions in the U.S. often precludes any understanding of why the CPC became a central feature in the solution to China's problems instead of standing in their way; why China has not adopted Western systems of governance, but sought its own; why and how the CPC evolved its developing patterns of governance out of a distinctive set of historical, revolutionary, and core aspects of Chinese civilization. And more: How the CPC has sustained national unity and stability today that enables a rapidity of prolonged change like no other nation has ever undergone.

All this contributes to making it difficult for Americans to understand what China hands John Service, Edgar Snow and several of their peers already knew in their bones—namely how and why the CPC had come to embody the historic mission to lead China from some of its darkest days into a radically transformed, modern, socially more just society. There was no model and no blueprint for doing this. But that's another way of underlining just how, for over a century, amid a constantly changing and threatening environment, the CPC found ways often through tumultuous struggles to remain a dynamic, experimenting, often highly pragmatic party capable of transforming itself while remaining true to its central vision in the most diverse of circumstances.

Diversity and development 

In the long run, the deeply rooted determination of the CPC to find an independent path for China has resulted in a genuine opening up toward a more multipolar, diverse world. Today, it further uncovers new possibilities for many nations that tie in with China's determination to create a fairer society that can inherently reinforce how other nations understand their own struggles to find an appropriate path to grow. It suggests different ways countries can think about governing themselves.

This is inherently tied into developing far more effective means of global governance—and how and why respect for effective assertions of national independence is a central part of this. So much more needs to be done; the mere vision does not suffice. Global economic governance, reform of the global financial markets, and a model of unbiased governance reflective of the needs of the time—these all stand at their beginnings.

China extends to all the aforementioned its own experiences—as well as the awareness that the historically oppressed nations, those still deep in poverty, those coping with waves of immigration, have claims of justice that need to be a part of any viable vision of governance. Nevertheless, this is just to underline why developing concepts and visions of global governance need, as China has long insisted, to be opened up to the urgent needs and realities of the non-Western world.

If it is difficult to find the right words to understand China in the U.S. on certain subjects, this is far less so in the non-Western world where China's impact seems, to me, to be more positively understood. Even in the U.S. there is some awareness of the imperative necessity to find new ways of governance—and thus a shared language may be easier here than in some other areas. 

I've read the three volumes of Xi Jinping: The Governance of China published by the Foreign Languages Press. I was struck by how he weaves together a commitment to the rejuvenation of China, core aspects of Chinese civilization, and a Chinese vision of socialism that is deeply rooted in the very origins of the CPC. His perspective on global problems is certainly wide ranging—including a deep commitment to an eco-civilization; the need to embrace and come to terms with the revolution of artificial intelligence; and the call for new forms of global governance. It's indeed rare to see a global leader so comfortably quoting from the diverse cultures of the world to develop his thoughts. 

What this conveys to me is a conviction that while we may live in a globalizing world, this does not require a globalized, standardized, and homogenized vision of humanity. Xi's articulation of the Chinese dream of national rejuvenation certainly speaks directly to this.

Here, what emerges reflects what is perhaps most enigmatic in man's historical experience—that we can speak of humanity but nowhere, in fact, can we convincingly discover a

simplified, universal ethos. Humanity has played out its destiny in a diversity of languages, a multitude of moral experiences, and a considerable number of philosophies and religions. Humanity in this sense is irreducibly plural.

In the words of Xi, "If world civilizations are reduced to one single color or one single model, the world will become monolithic and a dull place to live." On the technical and scientific level, it is relatively easy to communicate; popular culture, for instance, seems easily shared. Certainly, the problems we must somehow face together are frighteningly varied. Yet on the deeper level of historical creation diverse civilizations need to communicate with each other with nuance and an appreciation that cultural differences are a constant source of enrichment for humanity. This is a very different and more inspirational attitude than what one often finds among Americans who argue that it is the very decline of cultural distinctions that measures the progress of civilization.

In the end, given its cultural density and enduring civilization, and a commitment not just to wealth and power, but to social justice, I came away from these books with a sense of why China may more easily encompass an appreciation of humanity's variety than the homogenous globalization often seen central to Washington's fading vision of a U.S.-centric world.

Yet America's fading vision is not a sign of loss, as so many in the U.S. believe. It is instead suggestive of the possibility, however small, that America, as it has sometimes been in the past, will be more "open" to the world as it actually is—and accept the approaching place of China in it. And in that world, China will be the resurgent, if transformed and modernized, civilization that was long one of the greatest of all achievements of humanity.

This is an edited excerpt of an article first published on Cnfocus.com. The author is an adjunct professor at New York University in the History and East Asian Studies Departments 

Copyedited by Elsbeth van Paridon 

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