The People’s Republic of China has much to be proud of on its 75th birthday. Within a relatively short span of 75 years, China has made stunning progress in multiple areas of human development, and its achievement deserves to be globally recognised.

China’s economic transformation has been one of the most celebrated success stories. Riding on the improvements made to education and public health during the era of Mao Zedong’s leadership, China has achieved stupendous unbroken economic growth for more than 40 years. World Bank statistics show that China’s economy expanded by 6.55 times in the two decades after reform was launched in 1979.

After China’s entry into the World Trade Organisation in 2001, China’s economy exploded. It grew by more than 270 percent from 2000 to 2010. By 2019, the size of China’s economy had increased almost 90 percent, from $7.55 trillion to $14.3 trillion. According to the World Bank’s latest estimate, in 2024 the size of China’s economy, at $18.53 trillion, is the second largest in nominal US dollar terms, but the largest, at $35.29 trillion, as measured by purchasing price parity.

In the words of Columbia University scholar Professor Howard W French, China’s economic takeoff since its reform and opening-up “is an event of human importance that deserves consideration alongside the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution as one of the most impactful phenomena of the past millennium”.

The achievements of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in modernizing and transforming China are not confined to the economic arena. Through firmly adhering to the goal of building a socialist country with Chinese characteristics, the CPC has brought to China a political philosophy that has stood the test of challenging........

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