RAMALLAH, May 17 (Xinhua) -- The outstanding leadership capability of the Communist Party of China (CPC) is "a critical and very important factor" for China's success, according to a senior Palestinian party official.
"China's great changes are unimaginable," Abbas Zaki, head of Palestinian Fatah party's commissioner general of the Arab and Chinese Affairs, said in a recent interview with Xinhua.
The veteran official has visited China more than 10 times. His first trip to China was in 1974, when he visited China as a member of a delegation of the Palestine Liberation Organization.
Talking about China's rapid development over the decades, Zaki spoke highly of the CPC's governance practice and achievements.
In just one generation, China has transformed into a strong and modern country, which has successfully addressed prominent challenges including meeting 1.4 billion people's basic needs for food and clothing, said Zaki.
During his China visits, he noticed that China's villages and towns are growing at an "incredible" rate.
"What used to be poor villages have been transformed into productive, rich ones almost overnight. Some backward and desolate places in the past have become vibrant industrial parks," he said.
He once visited a suburban village near Beijing in the 1990s, which was surrounded by a lot of empty land with no decent roads. But when he visited the same place in 2018, what he found was a bustling town with a number of high-rise buildings.
To Zaki, the CPC's leadership and the political system with Chinese characteristics are admirable.
The party adheres to a people-centered development philosophy and takes people's aspiration for a better life as its goal, he noted.
In Zaki's eye, the CPC has a far-sighted national development strategy, which not only focuses on economic development and industrial construction, but also values education and sci-tech progress.
All these measures have provided driving forces for China's growth, navigating the Chinese economy towards high-quality development, he said.
Zaki spoke highly of the CPC's new concept of green development, saying that such a concept indicates that the party is placing ecological civilization and environmental protection in a more important position in the country's governance.
China's 14th Five-Year Plan has included green development into all aspects of China's economic and social development, he added.
"It's a very smart strategic plan," Zaki said, stressing that China's green development will benefit all mankind.
Zaki believes that the CPC's experience in governance and administration of state affairs is worth learning by other political parties around the world.
He noted the CPC is a political party that pursues the spirit of openness and is willing to conduct dialogue and exchanges with political parties of different types around the world.
Fatah looks forward to enhancing party exchanges with the CPC in a bid to seek a development approach that is most suitable for Palestine, he said. ■
