Experts shed light on China’s modernization at a seminar in late August in Shanghai. Photo: Zha Jianguo/CSST

SHANGHAI—China has pioneered a new and uniquely Chinese path to modernization, and created a new model for human advancement. At a seminar in late August in Shanghai, academics exchanged ideas on the topic.

“A new and uniquely Chinese path to modernization” not only has the universal characteristics of the world’s road to modernization, but also has its own particularities.

Compared with the modernized countries of the West, Chinese-style modernization is later in development, and it is a difficult and arduous journey, said Qin Xuan, director of the Institute of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era at Renmin University of China.

Chinese-style modernization aims at common prosperity for everyone, and it involves a super large population, Qin continued. What’s more, it is a path of peaceful development, and open and inclusive modernization.

The classic Western modernization theory believes that capitalist modernization is the “end of history” and is negative about other modernization paths. However, a new and uniquely Chinese path to modernization is under the premise of acknowledging the coexistence of the two systems of Capitalism and Socialism, and opposes the polar opposition and zero-sum game thinking of Western modernization theories, argued Wu Hongzheng, dean of the School of Marxism at Jilin University.

A new and uniquely Chinese path to modernization is the correct path to realize the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, and it is also the path to create a new model for human advancement.

Zhao Qingsi, dean of the School of Marxism at East China University of Political Science and Law, said that “a new model for human advancement” is not only different from Western capitalist civilization, but also from the Soviet socialist model. As the Chinese form of modern civilization, the new model for human advancement has developed Marxism, and reactivated the contemporary form of Chinese civilization with the power of Marxist truth.