(Red Boat in Jiaxing City, Zhejiang Province)

For a society, leadership is about the art of leading the members of the society in an organized and efficient way, which by its very nature, often refers to the accomplishment of goals co-created by all actors of the society.

Today, we have entered into the Global Age, or into a more digital scenario. We are more global people and share many global values and visions as well as practices. But at the same time, we are still facing conflicts and misunderstandings happening within communities or between countries. After all, we need more effective and sound leadership to contribute to global prosperity and try to avoid any backlash.

When we talk about refreshing a societal term, something like the leadership, it’s more accountable to bring more case studies and groundworks into consideration and discussion.

In East China’s Zhejiang Province, a medium coastal place where the e-commerce giant Alibaba headquarters has been upgraded its profile as “an important showcase for comprehensively demonstrating the superiority of the Socialist System with Chinese Characteristics in the New Era”.

Why does Zhejiang stand out from the crowds and enjoy such a nomination? The answers can be found at a recent event titled "Stories of CPC – Zhejiang’s Achievements in Practicing Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era" thematic briefing.

(Photo: Ye Ke)

Co-hosted by the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the CPC Zhejiang Provincial Committee, the thematic briefing was themed on "Drawing up and Following through the Blueprint". Nearly 400 representatives of political parties from more than 70 countries were present at the event either in person or remotely.

During the event, Yuan Jiajun, the incumbent Party Secretary of Zhejiang Province, gave his keynote speech which introduced the province’s significant achievements in the development of digitalization, the practices of environment protection as well as coordinated regional development in recent years.

Yuan’s remarks gave a concise summary about Zhejiang’s practices in achieving the goal of prosperous regional development in a global age, highlighted by the rollout of the “e-government model” in improving the efficiency of regional governance, the built-up of an interactive leadership style of solving public problems and co-creating public value outcomes at the grassroots scale, the considerate planning of inclusive urbanization and rural-urban integration.

For instance, the story of Lujia Village in Anji County shared remotely clearly showed how the villagers and local leaders of CPC achieved in eco-protection, garbage sorting, and other green development through an interactive leadership style and dialogue-focused negotiation mechanism.

At the briefing meeting, in his answering to the question raised by the Austrian Ambassador to China, the party secretary of Lujia Village Zhu Renbin introduced the working mechanism of China's rural grassroots party organization by taking Lujia Village as an example. (Watch the full interview below).