The “China model” has attracted international attention. How do foreigners regard the achievements of the CPC in the past 90 years? What challenges do they think the Party faces?

　　Robert Lawrence Kuhn, an international investment banker and corporate strategist, talks to China Daily and sheds some light on these questions.

　　On Party members

　　Kuhn: CPC members have a heightened sense of patriotism, which energizes their contributions to society. On occasion, this can become aggressive and counterproductive.

　　In today’s China, many are motivated, by ambition, to achieve. In a knowledge-based, market-driven, competitive world, this is a good thing for China.

　　There are abuses, particularly corruption and unethical behavior, but the fault is not the ambition, the market or the competitive will to achieve.

　　The fault is personal, and society needs to do more to instill the highest standards of behavior – without harming proper ambition.

　　On CPC’s success

　　Kuhn: There is no doubt that the more than 30 years of reform and opening-up which began in 1978 is one of the most remarkable transformations of a country in human history.

　　The CPC’s great innovation, pioneered by Deng Xiaoping, was to focus on practice more than on theory, which changed the character and contribution of the CPC.

　　I believe that “opening-up” was the real key to China’s success, because it gave the Chinese people a sudden, uncolored view of the real world.

　　On challenges facing CPC

　　Kuhn: Economically, the challenge is to keep the country’s GDP growing briskly and steadily while reducing the great imbalances in society.

　　To accomplish this, productivity is the key. Without increasing efficiencies in all areas of production and consumption, China will be mortgaging the future while improving the present.

　　Politically, I believe that, at least for the current times, China should continue with its one-party CPC rule; provided, of course, that the CPC remains true to its policies of the past 30 years, continues to put the people’s welfare first and works to institute careful political reform.