China's shift from policies that prioritize economic growth to more balanced and sustainable development as well as its successful containment of the COVID-19 pandemic has created a "future-proof" China, said a Malaysian politician.
Lee Chean Chung, treasurer general of Malaysia's People's Justice Party, started to understand modern China from a visit to the small commodity hub Yiwu in Zhejiang Province some six years ago.
"Yiwu is a very vibrant city, bustling with a lot of cars, people from around the world, so it's more like a global city because I can see that the people are coming from all over the world to conduct trading activities," Lee told Xinhua in a recent interview.
Since then, Lee has visited China multiple times, to the big cities like Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou, as well as places like Guangxi and Yunnan which have close exchanges with Malaysia.
Lee's most recent visit to China was in last year when he was invited by Peking University to attend an executive program for three months. During that stay in China, he witnessed how the COVID-19 pandemic had been brought under control.
"China at large has managed to curb and control the pandemic very well," he said. "I was given the opportunity to visit Leishenshan Hospital that was built in 10 days and Wuhan is back to normal when I visited in October ... that is really amazing."
Lee said China's "robust" governance model under the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC) has bolstered his understanding of the country.
For Lee, "a future-proof" China is an apt way of describing the country, and he hoped China's model could bring more benefits to the world.
China is "a vibrant place with more reform and opening-up," Lee said, hailing the decades-long policy as "a combination of rapid development with equitable distribution."
Lee was also impressed by the openness and willingness to exchange ideas by the Chinese officials he met.
"I think they were all very professional and also very open-minded and at the same time willing to have a lot of exchanges on our ideas and on our ways," said Lee.
"It is not just imposing something on you but more like a two-way exchange. I truly appreciate that, and I think for Asia and also for the world, we need more partnership and collaboration," he said.
As a state assemblyman for central Pahang state, Lee's constituency lies near the Malaysia-China Kuantan Industrial Park, part of the "twin parks" model between the two countries (the other park being the China-Malaysia Qinzhou Industrial Park). Lee has helped set up a local association to boost cooperation as well as trade and investment in the parks.
Lee said the parks are a "win-win situation not just for the people but also for both countries."
