Op-Ed:

After 18 days, China's most important annual political meetings, collectively

known as the “Two Sessions,” has come to a successful conclusion, highlighting
the advantages of Chinese-style democracy.
There is fear in the Western world about the health of its style of democracy.
While the extent of the challenges is up for debate, a political model that has
long been touted as the best is now being openly questioned and criticized, and
rightly so. The amount of dysfunction in the West is not only alarming, but
growing.
Perhaps nowhere is this crisis more evident than in the United States, which has
long defined itself as a standard-bearer of democracy for the world. As a recent
editorial in People’s Daily has pointed out, three “isms”: conservatism,
isolationism, and populism are bubbling up in the United States, and the “China
threat” is being grossly over-hyped.
The troubling trend gives us a clear picture of Western democracy’s health.
“The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan
polarization—one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential
conflict over race and culture,” Harvard professors Steven Levitsky and Daniel
Ziblatt argued in How Democracies Die. “And if one thing is clear from studying
breakdowns throughout history, it’s that extreme polarization can kill
democracies,” they added.
Extreme fragmentation and polarization are crippling American-style
democracy. But the challenges run far deeper than the chaos in Washington,
D.C. Cracks have been revealed in the Western model. “American democracy is
not as exceptional as we sometimes believe, the two professors concluded.
On the contrary, China's socialist democracy has been proven to be effective in
safeguarding the fundamental interests of the people. Unity of Party leadership,
the people running the country, and law-based governance are are defining
features of China’s socialist democracy.
Take China’s unique party system as an example. The multiparty cooperation
and political consultation under the leadership of the Communist Party of China
(CPC) overcomes the extreme divisions and disagreements that are tearing the
Western world apart.
Unlike the competitive and confrontational nature of Western politics, the CPC
and eight other political parties work together under the guidance of the CPC to
advance socialism and to improve the people’s living standards. The
relationship maintains political stability and social harmony and ensures
efficient policy making and implementation, which largely explains China’s
astonishing growth and historic achievements.
At the closing meeting of the first meeting of the 13th National People’s
Congress Tuesday morning, Chinese President Xi Jinping said that it is
impossible for a divided and fractured nation to advance and that solidarity is
power and the way to move forward. Indeed, the Chinese people have every
reason to have confidence in the path, theory, system, and culture of socialism
with Chinese characteristics.