Good government gives China stability, wealth: Bill Brown

To mark the centenary celebration of the Communist Party of China, the new episode of CPC at 100: Views from Expats features Bill Brown, a Xiamen University business professor who has spent 33 years in East China’s Fujian.

Brown says his fascination with China dates back to 1976 when he went to Taiwan. He was then determined to go to the Chinese mainland to know more about the oriental country’s history, culture and language, thereby opening the new page of his life in China. He was sure of China’s potential as the country with the world’s largest population was determined to end poverty.

Brown thought teaching graduate business at Xiamen University was a strategic opportunity as China’s economic development needed international business and he might play a part in the country’s anti-poverty fight.

Having spent half of his life in Xiamen, one of China’s earliest special economic zones, Brown has been amazed at the city’s development in the past three decades.

“I could not have imagined then that our sleepy little island town would just over a decade later win international awards for being one of the most livable cities on Earth,” he said.

And stretching his footprints outside coastal Xiamen, Brown says he saw a bigger picture of China’s development in other remote inland areas. In 1994, Brown and his family drove 40,000 kilometers and spent three months touring the country. In some poorer places like Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, Gansu and Guizhou provinces, Brown was amazed at the infrastructure projects the government has built to help locals build up skills and lift themselves out of extreme poverty.

He attributed the country’s success in the anti-poverty drive to visionary and skilled leaders plus also hard-working people dedicated to the Communist Party of China cause for the people. Calling the people he met “heroes,” Brown hopes to write stories about them some day. To convince the younger Chinese generation that the world’s future was in China, Brown applied for Chinese permanent residence and was finally approved in 1992.

“China achieved precision poverty alleviation only because it has precision government,” Brown said, adding that the country’s dual victories in 2020 over absolute poverty and COVID-19 reassured him of his confidence that the future was in China.

When Chinese President Xi Jinping sent Brown a letter in 2019 and encouraged him to write more stories about China. He agreed, as “China is such a great story.” He praised the country’s art of government as he believes good government gave China stability and wealth. Click on the video for more details.

(Produced by Liang Peiyu, Han Xiaomeng, Chen Lidan, Zhan Huilan and Yan Yiqiao)