China's people centered whole-process democracy brings shared prosperity: UK senior editor

 

The annual meetings of the National People's Congress (NPC), the China's top legislature, and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the top political advisory body, are ongoing in Beijing, which provide an opportunity for the world to better understand its whole-process people's democracy.

"The fundamental difference between the Chinese system and the western system is that Chinese system is based on consultation, cooperation, and consensus against the system that is based on competition, confrontation, and conflict," David Ferguson, Honorary Chief English Editor of Foreign Languages Press of China International Communications Group told GDToday in a recent interview.

"China's people centered whole-process democracy brings people real benefits," said Ferguson. He explained that the grassroots level of People's Congress is directly elected by the people using a system that is a little different from most western countries and other political systems worldwide, with multiple candidates for multiple seats. 

“So Chinese people do not vote for the members of the National People’s Congress, but they vote on the first level," said he.

And from his perspective, these are the best placed people to judge among their members who have the skills and attributes to serve at the next level up.

He attached great importance to hotly-discussed China's modernization, which is getting rising attention as more and more people share the fruits of development.

Ferguson comments, "You can see that very clearly in poverty alleviation and targeted poverty alleviation, it's essential to China's modernization that everybody rises, and nobody gets left behind."

China's modernization distinguishes itself from that of the West. It is a modernization of common prosperity for all the people. It can be seen from China's new development concept that features innovation, coordination, green, openness and sharing. Among them, shared development is very obvious.

He recalled his journey in rural Gansu, where he saw a huge number of new initiatives and exciting ideas that have transformed the economic prospects of what were once poor and remote via e-commerce, fast logistics and improved infrastructure.

Reporter | Hannah
Video editor | Axin
Video Script | Hannah
Poster designer | Lu Lu

Editor | Wing, Steven, Jasmine, Jerry