A decorative floral installation titled “Science and Technology Powerhouse” at the northeast corner of Dongdan on Chang’an Avenue in Beijing on Sept. 27 Photo: Lyu Jiazuo/CSST

On Oct. 1, 2026, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) celebrated the 77th anniversary of its founding. For 77 years, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has united and led the Chinese people of all ethnic groups in sustained efforts, guiding the Chinese nation through a great leap from standing up and growing prosperous to becoming strong. Since the 18th CPC National Congress, the Party has successfully advanced and expanded Chinese modernization through breakthroughs in both theory and practice.

As China enters a new stage in its history, CSST interviewed several scholars and experts in philosophy and the social sciences to reflect on the country’s exploration of Chinese modernization over the 77 years since the PRC’s founding and consider the prospects for further theoretical innovation and practical breakthroughs.

Major strides in modernization

From a destitute country to the world’s second-largest economy, and from shortages of food and clothing to a moderately prosperous society in all respects and the historic eradication of absolute poverty, China has charted a remarkable course of modernization. Chinese modernization shares common features with modernization elsewhere, yet its distinctive characteristics, rooted in the country’s realities, have written a new chapter in the history of human modernization.

Bringing over 1.4 billion people into modern society—a population larger than that of all developed countries combined—presents challenges of unprecedented scale and complexity. China’s modernization therefore follows a distinctive path, with approaches tailored to its circumstances.

In the 77 years since the PRC’s founding, China has built the world’s largest systems of education, social security, and health care, enabling hundreds of millions of people to share in the fruits of development. Wang Weiguo, executive dean of the School of Marxism at the University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that the collective progress of over 1.4 billion people toward modernization has given the process an unprecedented scale and breadth, profoundly reshaping the global modernization landscape.

The PRC’s 77 years of development, Wang said, demonstrate that China can achieve modernization, and that modernization can be more distinctly people-centered, rest on deeper civilizational foundations, and embody a broader vision of humanity.

An important institutional lesson of China’s modernization drive is that the pursuit of common prosperity can be translated into workable, assessable, and sustainable institutional arrangements and policy packages, said Meng Tianguang, Party secretary of the School of Social Sciences at Tsinghua University. Drawing on the strengths of the socialist system with Chinese characteristics, China has worked to better integrate an effective market, a well-functioning government, and an orderly society, steadily strengthening the institutions and mechanisms that underpin poverty alleviation, paired assistance, equal access to basic public services, rural revitalization, and public welfare and charity.

China has thus charted a modernization path that combines “making the cake bigger” with “dividing the cake fairly,” ensuring that the fruits of development benefit everyone more fully and equitably, Meng added.

Coordinated material and cultural-ethical progress is a key feature of Chinese modernization. While strengthening its material foundations, China has continued to advance cultural development—from improving the network of public cultural services to preserving and enriching fine traditional Chinese culture—steadily promoting shared prosperity in both material and cultural-ethical terms.

Tian Pengying, dean of the Institute of Chinese Modernization Studies at Northeastern University, observed that China has consistently pursued material and cultural-ethical advancement in tandem throughout its modernization, expanding material abundance and promoting individuals’ well-rounded development as part of society’s overall progress.

From building an industrial system in the PRC’s early years to advancing today’s “dual carbon” goals—peaking carbon emissions before 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality before 2060—China has steadily refined its understanding of the relationship between development and environmental protection, charting a new path of modernization in which humanity and nature coexist harmoniously. Luo Zhi, vice dean of the Economics and Management School at Wuhan University, noted that as industries upgrade and living standards rise, China’s development priorities have broadened from meeting basic needs to improving quality, making environmental quality a key measure of progress. Through this process, the country has gradually found a viable path along which economic growth and ecological protection advance hand in hand.

A country’s choice of modernization path profoundly shapes the way it relates to the world. Since its founding, the PRC has consistently followed the path of peaceful development. In the new era, China has actively worked to build a community with a shared future for humanity and uphold the shared values of humanity. Wang Zhidong, deputy Party secretary of Donghua University, said that Chinese modernization has dispelled the myth that “modernization equals Westernization,” demonstrated that the Western model is not the only template for modernization, and prompted a shift in modernization’s philosophical paradigm.

The distinctive worldviews and perspectives on civilization and ecology embodied in Chinese modernization, Wang Zhidong said, have expanded the theoretical horizons of contemporary scientific socialism and offered developing countries a new path toward modernization.

Building an original theoretical system

The grand journey of Chinese modernization has unfolded alongside an ever-deeper theoretical understanding, with every leap forward in theory responding to the questions arising at each stage of development.

Li Jianguo, a research fellow from the National Academy of Chinese Modernization at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that the people-centered development philosophy transcends a development logic centered on capital accumulation, while the pursuit of common prosperity for all moves beyond the vested interests that have fueled polarization in Western modernization. Coordinated progress in material, political, cultural-ethical, social, and ecological terms offers an alternative to a one-dimensional model fixated on material growth alone. Harmony between humanity and nature breaks with the old path of “pollution first, treatment later,” while peace, development, cooperation, and win-win outcomes reject the logic that might makes right. Through these advances, Chinese modernization has contributed Chinese insights and solutions.

Modernization is both a practical process that advances in stages and follows an upward spiral and a historical process in which theoretical understanding continuously deepens. Liu Ruiming, a professor from the National Academy of Development and Strategy at Renmin University of China, identified three stages in China’s modernization—national reconstruction and the building of industrial foundations, reform and opening up with institutional transformation, and high-quality development. This course has encompassed remarkable development achievements alongside adjustments and reforms as China navigated a complex path. The most important lesson, Liu said, is China’s combination of the socialist system with market mechanisms, and long-term planning with local experiments under the CPC’s leadership, charting a path toward building and improving the socialist market economy.

Tian emphasized that China’s achievements in modernization have reshaped its underlying logic, shifting the focus from capital to people. They have also reshaped modernization’s civilizational logic, transcending the “end of history” thesis by creating a new form of human advancement, and its global logic, moving beyond the old model of colonial expansion to promote a community with a shared future for humanity.

A people-centered approach forms the value foundation of Chinese modernization and runs throughout its theory and practice. Meng noted that Chinese modernization takes well-rounded human development as its starting point and ultimate goal. Whole-process people’s democracy provides institutional safeguards for the people’s dual role as the agents and purpose of development, while a people-centered development philosophy places their practical needs, well-being, and the pursuit of fairness and justice at the heart of governance. The people are participants in modernization, beneficiaries of its fruits, and the ultimate judges of its outcomes.

The report to the 20th CPC National Congress identified high-quality development as the primary task in building a modern socialist country in all respects and as one of the essential requirements of Chinese modernization. In Wang Zhidong’s view, promoting high-quality development is a major strategic choice intended to implement the new development philosophy, build a new development pattern, and respond to new contradictions, needs, and problems. It also marks a shift in direction grounded in the basic tenets of scientific socialism and the practice of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

Aligning research with practice

Over the past 77 years, Chinese research on modernization in philosophy and the social sciences has advanced alongside the country’s modernization, moving from interpreting experience to building theory, and from scattered analyses to systematic theoretical frameworks.

Tracing the evolution of scholarship on Chinese modernization, Wang Weiguo identifies three stages. In the early years of the PRC, “practice set the questions and theory supplied the answers”: Socialist construction began amid widespread poverty, and scholars in philosophy and the social sciences developed their understanding and explanations of modernization through direct engagement with practice.

Following the launch of reform and opening up, Wang Weiguo continued, it was more a matter of “the world as reference, China as respondent”: A wide range of modernization theories entered China, where scholars drew on them through comparison and assessed them critically. Now, in the new era, a more consequential shift is under way—“China sets the questions, China gives the answers, and the world listens.” In his view, Chinese modernization is no longer merely a “Chinese case” awaiting explanation by existing theories. It is increasingly fertile ground for new concepts, categories, and principles.

Major issues arising in practice—including new quality productive forces, high-quality development, security-oriented development, and common prosperity—require researchers studying Chinese modernization to identify clear priorities. Li proposed strengthening the theoretical foundations and developing more systematic theoretical accounts of Chinese modernization, while identifying substantive research questions in practical experience and translating that experience into theoretical insights. He also called for integrated approaches drawing on multiple disciplines, enabling scholarship to better support the cause of building a strong country and realizing national rejuvenation.

Discussing the core mission of philosophy and the social sciences in the new era, Luo called for scholarship grounded in Chinese practice that addresses contemporary questions and provides solid theoretical support and guidance for decisions concerning Chinese modernization. He urged further efforts to adapt development economics to the Chinese context and the needs of the new era—accounting for China’s development miracle while examining the prospects for even higher-quality development through research on expanding people’s capabilities, ensuring equal development opportunities, and improving quality of life. China’s rich practical experience, Luo added, should be distilled into testable theoretical propositions open to scholarly debate, informing national governance decisions and demonstrating to the world the possibilities offered by different modernization paths.

Liu argued that future research should build on China’s reform experience to develop testable explanations of why particular mechanisms work and under what conditions they apply, thereby yielding original theories rooted in Chinese practice with broader explanatory power.