ENDURING: The hammer and sickle remain the emblem of the CPC (YANG GUANG)

Yang Shanzhou is now a household name throughout China. While his claim to fame may not be earth-shattering, his dedication to leading people out of poverty is exemplary.

In March 1988, then 60-year-old Yang retired from his post of Secretary of the Baoshan Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC). Not content to stay at home, he led 15 people to the nearby Daliang Mountain to plant trees on the bare mountainside. The project took up the last 22 years of his life.

In 2009, a year before his death, Yang transferred his forest farm of more than 3,700 hectares to the local government so that the farm could benefit local people. The next year, the Baoshan Municipal Government rewarded him 200,000 yuan ($30,700) for his contribution to the local community, but he donated half of the award to a local middle school and the other half to the forest farm.

"I did this to show my gratitude to the Party," Yang said to Xinhua News Agency. What he meant is the fact that after the CPC came to power in his hometown, his family and his neighbors who did not have farmlands, got nearly 1 hectare of farm land each. "The Party helped my family out of difficulty in the past, I should try my best to help other people now."

Thanks for the earnings from his forest farm, more than 80 villages nearby can have access to clean water and electricity and three villages have roads constructed. "To be a Party member, you should do whatever you can to serve the people," said Yang.

"Yang set us a very good example of what a Party member should do and clearly explains the Party's principle of 'serving the people wholeheartedly,'" commented Yang Fuquan, Vice President of Yunnan Academy of Social Sciences.

People focus

"Giving top priority to people's interests in every development stage of the CPC is the main reason for the Party to rule China and be supported by the Chinese people for so many years," Dai Yanjun, Deputy Director of the Party Building Section of the Party School of the CPC Central Committee, told ChinAfrica.

So far, the 90-year-old CPC has ruled the world's most populous country for 62 consecutive years. "In the future, the CPC should further strengthen its contacts with the people so as to gain more support from them," said Dai. It is reported that one of the reasons for the chaos in some countries nowadays is that people's needs are not being met.

Dai said in different stages of development, the CPC puts its focus on different aspects of governance.

After China's reform and opening up to the outside world in the late 1970s, the country needed urgently to develop its economy, after the "cultural revolution" (1966-76) stalled China's economic development for a decade. At the Third Plenary Session of the 11th CPC Central Committee held in 1978, the Party decided to shift its focus to economic development.

This has enabled China to witness rocketing economic growth in the past over 30 years.

In January 2011, China announced that its overall GDP in 2010 hit $5.88 trillion, a figure exceeding that of Japan, becoming the world's second largest economy after the United States.  

In helping disadvantaged groups out of poverty, the CPC has also done a good job. China is the first developing country to achieve the poverty reduction target prescribed in the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. Owing to the huge investment in education sector, more than 99 percent of the school-age children could go to school, according to statistics of the State Council in 2009.

"You can see from the figures that the CPC has done a good job in mobilizing people's enthusiasm in boosting China's development in all aspects," said Dai.

New transfer

However, the rapid economic development also exerted negative influences upon other areas, resulting in, for example, the deterioration of environment and the increase of the gap between the rich and the poor. Meanwhile, owing to the rapid economic development, people's demands also diversified, adding more difficulties in the work of the CPC.

Targeting the problems, beginning in 2002, the CPC focused on the Scientific Outlook on Development in promoting China's further development. This concept means sustainable development is possible through tested and proven methodologies of governance.

"This concept means that the CPC will pay more attention to making China's development more sustainable; that is to say, we need to focus on the quality, not merely the quantity, of GDP growth, and see how it can better serve the people without harming their living environment," explained Dai.

At the climate summit held in Copenhagen in December 2009, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao vowed to cut China's carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by 40-45 percent by 2020 from the 2005 level. Prior to this, China's carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP had already been reduced by 46 percent in 2005 from the 1990 level.