FROM Asia and The Pacific to Europe and The Americas, Africa and the Caribbean, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) remains an essential life partner for humanity, from being the world’s factory to owning a very big slice of the global economy.

Just as anyone can – anytime and anywhere — be wearing or using, or can easily point to something within reach with a ‘Made in China’ label, so has China’s economy been permanently integrated globally over the last four-plus decades.

But it didn’t all happen by accident.
Instead, it was the result of adoption, over time, of deliberate policies and goals based on plans set and pursued by the country’s biggest political force, the ever-growing Communist Party of China (CPC), in office since 1949.

Centralised and advanced long-term planning by any party with more than 100 million members and supporters dedicated to a national cause will yield expected results over generations — and so it is with the CPC and the PRC.
Established in 1921, the CPC would 28 years later lead the revolution that established the PRC; and a century later, the CPC would reaffirm its plan to transition the PRC to a system of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics by 2049, the Centenary of the Republic.

Having shown its ability to build its economy with power and resilience while keeping level heads and hands on its levers of China’s share of the world economy, the PRC has also established its own air, naval and ground armed forces, with strong and advanced weapons and munitions systems, capable of defending itself against any type of attack and protecting its land and seas from external aggression or encroachment.
The CPC closed the 20th Century and opened the 21st as an unrivaled world power in its own right.

The return of Hong Kong to its origins in 1992 was followed by two decades of development that shot for the stars — until COVID-19 some 27 years later, when the PRC had to battle the pandemic at home and fend efforts, without proof, to blame China for its arrival.
But before, during and after the three-year pandemic, Chinese medical scientists worked with colleagues from The University of the West Indies (The UWI) medical and science faculties, alongside Cuban counterparts, in Wuhan, to produce early medical responses and leading to Cuba’s development of several different COVID-19 vaccines, shared with the rest of the world.
That co-operation with China and Cuba also allowed The UWI to give early expert advice to Caribbean Community (CARICOM) governments, until the global vaccination mechanism was employed and deployed to start bringing the pandemic under effective control.

The Ukraine War that started in February 2022 on Russia’s border and its resulting supply chain and sanctions repercussions, forced nations forever watching China to start looking within, as Moscow survived the sanctions while Europeans paid the ultimate price through much-higher cost-of-living prices for everything from food and fuel to all-else depending on energy – and all affecting the poorest most in every nation – North, South, East and West.
The visit to Taiwan by then-outgoing US House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, 11 months ago was followed by a series of similar diplomatic and political mishaps, including a repeat Pelosi-type meeting by her successor, Kevin Mc Carthy, with Taiwan’s pro-independence leader Madam Tsai Ing-wen just months later, this time on US soil.

The Pelosi visit last August allowed for the type of avoidable fireworks displays in the Taiwan Strait that reaffirmed China’s stronger control of and ability to defend its seas and skies from external threats – and accordingly upgrade its military strategies and tactics for any future possibilities.
China and the US have been through another round of diplomatic and political standoffs after the shooting of a balloon with Chinese language signage in US airspace that Washington loudly claimed was spying, but would later confirm was not.
But the diplomatic and political results were deadly serious, with relations between Beijing and Washington diving to the deepest low in decades, resulting in dispatches of successive patch-up top-notch US diplomats and officials to China in quick succession, starting with Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, followed by Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen and US climate czar, John Kerry.

Meanwhile, China’s shared leading role in the BRICS group of developing nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) is attracting attention, as it remains well-set to give The South a louder voice on the global stage, consistent with its members’ breadth, depth and strength by the real value of representing the most people on Planet Earth and the most natural and human resources — and sharing a greater part of the global economy.
Indeed, the BRICS have already created their New Development Bank to offer new platforms and currencies for fairer world trade; and with Saudi Arabia and many, many other nations planning to join, the writing is on the wall is quite clear: The beginning of the end of unipolar and unilateral impositions by stronger and richer nations — in the name of self-anointed exceptionalism — in future global political and economic decisions affecting the entire world.

Likewise, China’s laudable achievements as another world power in space research and exploration, alongside Russia and India, is understandably shivering spines in the North, as nations of The South develop their own independent space programmes following the recent destruction of decades of international co-operation through the shared space station that saw the US, Europe and Russia work together in the post-Cold War era – until Ukraine.

Approaching its 75th anniversary in 2024, the PRC is in 2023 marching ahead with its usual confidence of always eventually finding ways to turn challenges into opportunities for China and the world to always continue to coexist peacefully.
And here again, never mind the naysayers, China just keeps growing taller and stronger on the various political and economic, military and diplomatic platforms on the world stage.