As the Communist Party of China marks its 105th anniversary, it is worth setting aside the well-worn debates about ideology and asking a simpler question: What has actually been accomplished? For a party that began in 1921 with barely a few dozen members, the answer is a national transformation with few parallels in human history — and one that the West, for all its skepticism, has yet to reckon with honestly.
Begin with the most fundamental measure of any government: whether it can lift its people out of want. Since 1978, the beginning of China’s reform and opening-up period, GDP growth has averaged over 9 percent a year, lifting almost 800 million people out of extreme poverty and transforming China from a low-income to upper-middle-income country. World Bank records showed that by 2020, China had eradicated extreme poverty. To eliminate, in a single generation, the kind of grinding destitution that had afflicted the Chinese nation for millennia is not a statistical footnote. It is, by any honest accounting, one of the great humanitarian achievements of the modern age.
What distinguishes the Party’s approach is not merely the scale of these gains but the discipline to consolidate them. Rather than declaring victory and walking away, it built a system to prevent backsliding. The results are tangible: In counties that had only recently shed poverty, average annual income growth during the nation’s 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) reached 8.2 percent, outpacing the national rural benchmark. The transformation of Zheng’an, once an impoverished county in Guizhou, into one of the world’s largest guitar-manufacturing bases — producing one in every seven guitars sold globally — shows what happens when development capabilities, not just subsidies, are channeled to where they are needed most.
The SAR’s prosperity is bound ever more tightly to the Chinese mainland’s trajectory; and the discipline, foresight, and people-centered focus that delivered these results offer a model worth understanding. As the Party turns 105, the honest verdict is not that its system is perfect — no system is — but that its achievements have earned a fair hearing
Of course critics will say that growth has now slowed and that headwinds abound. They are not entirely wrong. Yet even amid a property downturn and a trade war waged by Washington, China recorded GDP growth of 5 percent in 2025, meeting the government’s target despite a challenging domestic and external environment. More telling than the headline figure is its composition. For the first time, China’s per capita GDP reached 99,665 yuan ($13,953), staying above $13,000 for three consecutive years. A country once synonymous with cheap labor now anchors much of the world’s advanced industry.
Indeed, the deeper story of the past decade is the Party’s deliberate pivot from quantity to quality. Where China once made shirts and shoes, it now races at the frontier of technology. In 2025, total investment in research and development increased by 8.1 percent year-on-year, while the ratio to GDP reached 2.8 percent, exceeding the average level of members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development for the first time. This is not accidental drift but strategic intent.
The fruits are visible everywhere: The added value of high-tech manufacturing enterprises above the designated size increased by 9.4 percent compared with the previous year, and the export value of high-tech products rose by 13.2 percent in 2025. International institutions have taken note. China has risen to 10th position in the global innovation ranking for 2025, up one spot from the previous year, marking its first entry into the top 10, according to the World Intellectual Property Organization. That ascent has been swift and sustained, for since 2013, China has risen 25 places, making it one of the fastest-rising economies in innovation. Such a climb does not happen by chance in a single year; it reflects a generation of patient, coordinated investment.
Beyond the laboratory, the Party’s record on social welfare deserves equal attention, because development that does not reach ordinary households is hollow. Here too the figures are striking. In 2025 alone, China created 12.67 million new urban jobs, while residents’ per capita disposable income rose by 5 percent in real terms, keeping pace with economic growth. Most consequential of all is the safety net now spread beneath a population of 1.4 billion: China’s social security system was further expanded last year, and by the end of 2025, 1.08 billion people were covered by basic pension insurance and 1.33 billion by basic medical insurance. To extend health and retirement coverage to well over a billion people is an administrative feat that wealthier nations have never matched.
None of this happens by spontaneous market magic. It requires an organization capable of translating long-term strategy into action at every level, from the ministry to the neighborhood. The point was driven home recently at a national conference on Party-building in Beijing, which made clear, in the Party’s own framing, its commitment to enhancing its self-governance so it can continue to provide strong leadership for the country’s high-quality development. That insistence on disciplined self-reform is, in truth, the engine behind every statistic cited above.
To see how that organizational reach touches daily life, one need only look to an aging residential compound in Jiaxing, Zhejiang, where residents had long wanted elevators but were stymied by disputes over cost. Local Party members went door to door, listened, and devised a pay-to-use model that finally broke the deadlock. It is a small story, but it explains the large one: a governance system that connects national ambition to the concerns of an ordinary household.
For the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, the lesson is neither distant nor abstract. The SAR’s prosperity is bound ever more tightly to the Chinese mainland’s trajectory; and the discipline, foresight, and people-centered focus that delivered these results offer a model worth understanding. As the Party turns 105, the honest verdict is not that its system is perfect — no system is — but that its achievements have earned a fair hearing.
The author is the convener at China Retold, a member of the Legislative Council, and a member of the Central Committee of the New People’s Party.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
