Profile: With popular mandate, Xi Jinping spearheads new drive to modernize China

After the Party congress, Xi headed to Henan province, Central China, and visited the Yinxu Ruins. The 3,300-year-old site was the capital of the late Shang (Yin) Dynasty, the first ruins confirmed from this period. Walking slowly into the Yinxu Museum, Xi thoughtfully took in the exhibits, spanning bronze ware, jade ware, oracle bone inscriptions, and other relics.

"I have wanted to visit here for so long," Xi said. "I come here thirsty for a deeper understanding of Chinese civilization so that we can make the past serve the present and draw inspirations for better building modern Chinese civilization."

With a long and continuous history, Chinese civilization shaped our great nation, and this nation will continue to be great, Xi added, urging efforts to promote traditional culture, which according to the leader, is the "root" of the Party's new theories.

Xi proposed combining the basic principles of Marxism with traditional culture, believing that only when a country's modernization is rooted in the fertile soil of its history and culture can it flourish and endure.

In 2014, Xi said he was reluctant to see Chinese classic poems and essays removed from the textbooks when visiting Beijing Normal University. In November 2013, he visited Qufu, the birthplace of Confucius, and the following year, he addressed an international commemoration of the ancient Chinese philosopher. In 2021, when he visited a park dedicated to Zhu Xi in east China's Fujian Province, Xi stopped for a long time in front of the words of the renowned Chinese Confucian philosopher in the 12th century. Zhu famously said that a nation is based on its people, and society is also established for the benefit of its people. Xi, in an earlier group study session of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, had quoted Zhu's words, stressing that no political consideration is more important than the people.

Xi has repeatedly lamented the humiliation and defeat suffered by the Chinese nation, despite its place at the forefront of the world over the past 5,000 years.

In particular, he felt that China's modernization had achieved significant results "at great cost and with great hardships." He stressed China, therefore, should blaze its own trail toward modernization. Experts believe that Chinese modernization, which offers a new form of human advancement, dispels the myth that "modernization is equal to Westernization." Xi said efforts must be made to achieve higher efficiency than capitalism while maintaining fairness in society more effectively.

According to Zheng Yongnian, a professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen), Chinese modernization is a way to deal with the problems all countries face. Above all, the source of its vitality is mainly sustainable economic development, he said.

British scholar Martin Jacques believes that if China can successfully address inequality in the way it has conquered absolute poverty, such fairer and more inclusive modernity will have an enormous global impact.

Xi is proud and confident of the achievements and prospects of the modernization drive. He once said, "China has been able to look the world in the eye," referring to the country's rise in strength. This, however, does not mean the pursuit of unilateral dominance, still less a clash of civilizations. He cited the famous "sleeping lion" metaphor for China and noted, "Today, the lion has woken up. But it is peaceful, pleasant, and civilized."

He has underscored that China will not follow in the footsteps of certain countries that achieved modernization through war, colonization and plunder, and that China upholds peace, development, cooperation, and mutual benefit, which is determined by the Chinese system and culture.

A phrase containing "promote humanity's shared values of peace, development, fairness, justice, democracy, and freedom" was written into the Party Constitution last year.

Xi also modestly proposed that socialism in the primary stage must conscientiously study and draw on the beneficial achievements of civilization created by capitalism. "The cause of promoting Chinese modernization, which is an unprecedented and pioneering venture, will inevitably encounter all kinds of risks, challenges, difficulties, and even dangerous storms, some of which we can foresee and others we cannot," Xi said. "Let us harness our indomitable fighting spirit to open new horizons for our cause."

"Those who work will succeed, and those who walk will arrive at their destination. A person of action will leave a good name in history," he said.