By Xue Lingqiao

(ECNS) — “One of the reasons I think that has been so successful, in terms of China’s internal modernization improvement，is because of the foundation of the common good,” said Stephen Brawer, chairman of the Belt and Road Institute in Sweden, in a recent interview with China News Network. He also voiced his ideas on socialism with Chinese characteristics, the Chinese modernization, and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

2023 marks the 102nd anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China (CPC). Stephen Brawer pointed out that socialism with Chinese characteristics has a long history that embraces much of the great Chinese civilization.

He owes the success of Chinese modernization to the government’s idea that all people in China should have a good standard of living. “The idea of the common good has been a part of the Chinese civilization,”Brawer emphasized, adding that this had a lot to do with the Confucian philosophy.

Brawer has given the example of China’s success in eliminating extreme poverty, saying that there has been no example in history, in which a nation of the size of China has been able to lift 800 million people out of extreme poverty.

“This should be a shining example for the world,”Brawer noted, praising China’s brilliant social development.

On the reasons of the success of the fight against extreme poverty, Brawer commended that the modernization of infrastructure is and has always been the basis for the elimination of extreme poverty and that is exactly what China has been doing for the last 40 years.

“In modernizing and industrializing the country, China has reached out to areas which have previously had more internal difficulties, in terms of reaching a genuine economic development and improving living standards,” he added.

He also mentioned that the Chinese people can see what is actually going on in China, and they are happy. “That is the responsibility of the leadership”, he said.

Speaking of the global influence of the success of China’s poverty alleviation, Brawer believed that China’s success is already beginning to resonate in that way with developing nations.

“But this has led to some attempts, especially by the United States, to try and place their view of socialism onto China,”Brawer observed, criticizing that those attempts are totally lacking in substance, because some countries failed to understand the deeper nature of Chinese development and Chinese civilization.

“The question of socialism with Chinese characteristics has a much deeper question of why the socialism and Communist Party of China has been so successful, because it has a much deeper dynamic than what most westerners understand or interpret,”he further pointed out.

2023 also marks the 10th anniversary of the BRI proposed by China. By the end of June in 2023, 152 countries and 32 international organizations have signed over 200 cooperation agreements with China. The BRI has been expanding its friend circle and influencing more countries.

Brawer emphasized that these cooperation agreements are voluntary and are based on a cooperative principle, not something that is being imposed.

“I think the world is responding to a basis for building cooperation and ultimately, even more importantly, friendship, which is also a fundamental principle”, he observed, saying that friendship is one of the basis one builds trust and then brews trust cooperation with others, based on his study on the Confucian philosophy.

“The Swedish population and Swedish businesses that join in the BRI will open the doors for a far improved economic development”, said the Swedish researcher, mentioning that these people would use a great deal of Sweden’s scientific and engineering capabilities, which are quite advanced and quite effective, to participate in helping to improve conditions, modernization for countries along the BRI.

“In my view, the BRI and the forward development of Asia and the developing countries is a virtually unstoppable process,” said Brawer on his perspective on the BRI.

During the interview, Brawer also shared his opinions on the role of science and technology in advancing Chinese modernization. He thought that education means a lot when inspires a nation and its people to improve and participate in the creative process.

“The Global Development Initiative, the Global Civilization Initiative, which I think, are fundamental basis for an expanding and improving friendship, because it’s based on the proper understanding of what the nature of the human spirit is,” he concluded.