Is China proselytising its path to success?
At the 19th Party Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Chinese leader Xi Jinping appeared to present China’s development path as a model for other countries to imitate. Xi stated that China’s success provides ‘a new option for nations who want to speed up their development while preserving their independence’. China’s socialist system, he added, offers ’Chinese wisdom and a Chinese approach to the problems facing mankind’. In a speech just over a month later, Xi seemed to retract his statement: China would ‘neither import foreign models of development nor export the Chinese model and ask other countries to copy the Chinese practice’. Is the CCP proselytising its development model or not?
