File photo of Chandran Nair, founder and CEO of the Pan-Asian think tank Global Institute for Tomorrow.

The founder of a Pan-Asian think tank said he believes the advantages of China’s system have shown the world fresh possibilities and novel ways of implementing people-centered policies, and he called on China to better promote its valuable experience to the world.

In an interview with China Daily on Wednesday, Chandran Nair — a Malaysian business leader and founder of the Global Institute for Tomorrow — said he has visited many places in China over the past 25 years, and has been deeply impressed by their amazing transformations, especially in infrastructure and poverty alleviation.

Chandran Nair, who lived Northwest China’s Gansu province for 10 years, said that the small towns and villages in Gansu invested a lot of money in important areas such as housing, transportation, electricity, sanitation, water quality, and landscaping

Nair visited Gansu province in northwest China for 10 years as he has many friends from the ethnic minority communities there. He said the small towns and villages in Gansu invested a lot of money in important areas such as housing, transportation, electricity, sanitation, water quality, and landscaping.

It previously took him six hours to travel from Lanzhou of Gansu province to Xiahe county. Now the travel time has been cut in half with the opening of more highways and high-speed railways.

Great efforts have also been made in fighting corruption. Corrupt officials are not tolerated anymore and got punished. Some ethnic minority friends told Nair that they got back the land that had been occupied by corrupt officials or were compensated for their losses.

Nair has been to many other countries and regions around the world, but he has never seen such a large scale of improvement in local people’s lives, taking place in such a short time frame.

“We’re not talking Beijing or Shanghai; we’re talking small places, with populations of about 200,000 people, striving so hard to improve the quality of lives of very poor people. This is what most amazed me,” he said.

Such a huge transformation couldn’t have been achieved without the leadership of the Communist Party of China, which has adopted a people-centered principle throughout its governance.

Nair said that many other countries have also upheld similar policies to increase people’s well-being, but China is the first country to implement the principle on such a large scale, at such speed and endeavoring to do it in a sustainable way.

He said it was interesting for him to see that the Chinese government is highly regarded among its people and has made various far-reaching efforts with the support of hundreds of millions of Chinese people.

This is only possible because the administration has a visionary and strong leadership, with competent talents taking up vital positions, Nair said.

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A similar model also proved successful in Singapore. A small country with equally capable leaders, it has created one of the most advanced and diverse societies in the world, he added.

Despite its many strengths and having done such a good job, yet China’s administration model is still not fully recognized by some Western nations. They believe that there is only one form of people-centered policy that can be applied all over the world, and that is the so-called “liberal democracy” prevailing in the Western world.

He argued that a sound government and system that listens to the will of the people does not necessarily always have to be fashioned around the Westerners’ liberal democratic system, and China’s success is a good example.

Refusing to accept that China’s model proved to be effective, some leading Western media outlets are also not interested in, or even resist, reporting good Chinese stories, which creates room for distorted negative publicity of China on the global stage, Nair continued.

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He encouraged China to strengthen its efforts in telling good Chinese stories and showcase its progress to the world, to counter the distorted reporting from antagonistic forces.