The 20th Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) has been the focus of a lot of attention around the world. This Congress will mark a further advance along China's path of development. The CPC has been guiding the modernization of the economy and the creation of new policies and practices aimed at improving the lives of the people, moving toward the establishment of a socialist system of production and distribution. This has been a challenging endeavor, with contradictions that have arisen in the course of the reform period, but which the Party has been working to address.

Photo: Kenneth Hammond

This Congress will be a moment when the leadership will report to the delegates, and via the media to the people overall. There are many hopes and expectations for the future, and this Congress will be an opportunity for the Party to present its vision of where China will be heading in the next few years.

The past decade has been a period in which China has become more self-confident, and less willing to accommodate the dominance of the United States and its Western allies in global affairs. China has sought to chart its own course, to prioritize the needs of the Chinese people, and to make itself more autonomous and secure in the face of increasing American hostility.

China has become a leader in addressing global warming and other environmental concerns, in raising hundreds of millions of people out of absolute poverty, in many fields of technological innovation, and in working with other developing countries around the world to establish relationships of mutual benefit, such as the Belt and Road Initiative.

China has demonstrated its commitment to the well-being of the people through its management of the COVID-19 pandemic, with only about 5,200 deaths, while the US, which makes health care a profit-centered business, has seen 1.1 million deaths.

Elites in America and some other countries, fearing for the loss of the power and profits they have enjoyed for many decades, see China as a threat, and view the successes of the CPC in seeking a path to a socialist future, in caring for the needs of the people, and in pursuing solutions to global problems, most particularly climate change, as somehow damaging American interests.

But the period of American hegemony is over, and the deep structural changes taking place in the world are trending towards a more balanced economic and political order. American elites are harming the American people, and their own interests, by adopting an attitude of fear and hostility toward China.

Hopefully the 20th Congress of the CPC will help further make clear that the path on which China is embarked is one which does not seek to dominate other countries, but is aimed at China's own development and at sharing in the tasks of building a better world with working people around the planet.

(The author of this article, Kenneth Hammond, is an American historian and a professor of New Mexico State University; the views expressed in this article reflect those of the author, not necessarily those of the People's Daily. )