The World Significance of Chinese-Path Modernization from the Dimensions of Time, Space and Civilizational Narrative

Under the strong leadership of the Communist Party of China, the Chinese-path modernization forged by the Chinese people has completely transformed the destiny of the Chinese nation and propelled an unprecedented great transformation of Chinese civilization. No two leaves in the world are exactly alike, nor is there a single modernization model that stands as the sole authority. Chinese-path modernization has opened up diverse and multi-dimensional paths of exploration for modernization, contributing Chinese solutions and Chinese wisdom to the peoples of the world. Viewed against the broader canvas of world history and a higher philosophical significance, the world significance of Chinese-path modernization is prominently embodied in three dimensions: time, space and civilization. Chinese-path modernization allows us to transcend the temporal, spatial and civilizational narratives dominated by the developed Western countries and to possess entirely new time, space and a new form of human civilization.

在中国共产党的坚强领导下，中国人民奋力开创的中国式现代化，彻底改变了中华民族的命运，推动了中华文明前所未有的巨大转型。世界上没有两片完全相同的树叶，也不存在定于一尊的现代化模式。中国式现代化开辟了现代化多样、多维的探索道路，为世界人民贡献了中国方案和中国智慧。放眼更广阔的世界历史和更高远的哲学意义，中国式现代化的世界意义突出地体现在时间、空间和文明三个维度上。中国式现代化让我们超越西方发达国家主宰的时空和文明叙事，拥有了全新的时间、空间与人类文明新形态。

Reclaiming the Time Usurped by the West

夺回被西方抢占的时间

Chinese-path modernization has bridged the temporal gap and reclaimed the time that had been preempted and ideologized by the developed Western countries.

中国式现代化抹平了时间的鸿沟，夺回了被西方发达国家抢占和意识形态化的时间。

Among the multitude of earthly species, only humans are temporal beings. Time is both an objective, flowing, irreversible physical time and a product of human measurement and discipline, filled with hidden and complex social-historical content. Surveying the history of human thought, Marx profoundly revealed the great significance of time for social development and human emancipation. Marx held that time must be examined in connection with labor: the laboring masses produce surplus products beyond necessary labor, and these surplus products free up time, thereby providing the non-laboring classes with free time. "The production of society's free time is based on the production of unfree time"; "to the free time of one side corresponds the enslaved time of the other." He also emphasized that the entire development of humanity is the utilization of this free time. Since modern times, with the global expansion of capital, the capitalist world system of "center-periphery" and "domination-subordination" gradually took shape. China, along with other colonial and semi-colonial countries, once became the object of plunder and enslavement by Western powers and, at the same time, the supplier of their free time. Within the world order pattern dominated by the developed Western countries, time was empowered and ideologized. In 1884, the International Meridian Conference designated Britain as the zero time zone, and in October of the same year, Greenwich Mean Time became the international standard time. This standard was not granted by nature but was a manifestation of Britain's international status, which at that time possessed a powerful naval force and a global colonial network. After the Opium War of 1840, foreign merchant ships forcibly imposed "coastal time" on the Bund in Shanghai, a port time standard dominated by the British that disrupted the temporal order of ancient China. The unification of time is a basic framework of modernization and a manifestation of the power and order dominated by capital and its empires. It arrogantly proclaimed that developed countries are in the upstream of time, advanced and civilized, representing the future, while late-developing countries are in the downstream of time, backward and barbaric, representing only the past. The gap in the river of time gradually widened into an epochal gap, becoming an insurmountable chasm between different nations and countries.

在繁多的地球物种中，只有人是时间性的存在。时间既是客观存在的、流逝的、不可逆转的物理时间，又是人们测度、规训的产物，充满隐秘而复杂的社会历史内容。纵观人类思想史，马克思深刻揭示了时间之于社会发展和人类解放的重大意义。马克思认为，必须把时间与劳动联系起来进行考察，劳动群众超出必要劳动而生产出剩余产品，剩余产品把时间游离出来，从而给不劳动阶级提供了自由时间。“社会的自由时间的产生是靠非自由时间的产生”，“同一方的自由时间相应的是另一方的被奴役的时间”。他还强调，整个人类的发展就是对这种自由时间的运用。近代以来，随着资本在全球的扩张，资本主义“中心—外围”“支配—从属”的世界体系逐渐形成。中国曾经同其他殖民地半殖民地国家一道，成为西方列强掠夺和奴役的对象，同时成为其自由时间的供给者。在西方发达国家主导的世界秩序格局中，时间被权力化和意识形态化。1884年，国际经度会议规定英国为零时区，同年10月，格林尼治时间成为国际标准时间。这一标准不是自然赋予的，而是当时拥有强大海权与全球殖民网络的英国的国际地位的体现。1840年鸦片战争之后，外国商船在上海外滩上强行实行“海岸时”，这个由英国人主导的港口时间标准，扰动着古老中国的时间秩序。时间的统一，是现代化的基本架构，也是资本及其帝国所主宰的权力和秩序的体现。它傲慢地宣告：发达国家处于时间的上游，是先进、文明的，代表未来，而后发国家处于时间的下游，是落后、野蛮的，只能代表过去。时间之河的差距逐渐拉大为时代的差距，更成为不同民族、国家间不可跨越的鸿沟。

This chasm has been gradually bridged with the successful advancement of Chinese-path modernization, precisely because the Chinese Communists possess a profound Marxist view of time. Comrade Deng Xiaoping repeatedly emphasized the need to "strive for time to work" and not to "waste all the time and accomplish nothing." General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out: "Since the founding of New China, especially since reform and opening up, we have completed in just a few decades the industrialization process that took developed Western countries several centuries, creating miracles of rapid economic growth and long-term social stability, and opening up broad prospects for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation." Chinese-path modernization, rising from the humiliation and subjugation of modern China, starting from the rebirth of New China through fire, and striding forward on the path of national rejuvenation, has finally progressed from lagging behind the times to catching up with the times and then to leading the times, bridging the temporal chasm that once lay between China and the developed countries. Chinese-path modernization means that the Chinese people and the Chinese nation have truly taken control of their own time and, consequently, their own destiny.

这一鸿沟随着中国式现代化的成功推进而逐步弥合，这是因为中国共产党人具有深邃的马克思主义时间观。邓小平同志多次强调，要“争取时间干”，不能“把时间都争掉了，什么也干不成”。习近平总书记指出：“新中国成立特别是改革开放以来，我们用几十年时间走完西方发达国家几百年走过的工业化历程，创造了经济快速发展和社会长期稳定的奇迹，为中华民族伟大复兴开辟了广阔前景。”中国式现代化从近代中国的沉沦屈辱中昂首，从新中国的浴火重生中起步，大踏步地迈进民族复兴之路，终于从落后于时代到赶上时代再到引领时代，抹平了横亘在中国和发达国家之间的时间鸿沟。中国式现代化意味着中国人民和中华民族真正掌控了自身的时间，也真正掌控了自身的命运。

Eliminating the Development Gap Between East and West

消弭东方与西方的发展落差

Chinese-path modernization has eliminated the spatial disparity, transforming the developmental hierarchical pattern in which "the East is subordinate to the West."

中国式现代化消弭了空间的落差，使“东方从属于西方”的发展差序格局得以改变。

Looking at the entire history of human development, Western countries were the first to embark on the path of modernization in modern times. Driven by the accumulated powerful momentum of historical events such as the Age of Discovery, the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution, the modernization movement in Western Europe arose and gradually spread worldwide. Marx and Engels believed that the bourgeoisie opened up the world market, traveled across the globe, and, through large-scale industrial production and cheap commodity prices, drew all nations into its system of exploitation and profit-making, "just as it has made the country dependent on the town, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilized ones, nations of peasants dependent on nations of bourgeois, the East dependent on the West." From that time onward, capital accumulation altered the spatial structure of human civilization and, through spatial restructuring, further strengthened capital accumulation. In the global spatial reorganization of capital, local differences were solidified into developmental disparities. Although East and West coexist on the same planet, they had been split into two utterly different worlds. On one side was the West, represented by capital, characterized by excessive production, the creation of immense wealth, the accumulation of vast quantities of commodities, and a life of extravagance and dissipation; on the other side was the East, represented by labor, filled with arduous toil, poverty, suffering, enslavement, and tears of blood. The world, as a complex entity interweaving prosperity and misery, greed and dedication, gold and blood, exhibited differences even more rigidly demarcated than the rugged natural topography.

从整个人类发展史来看，近代以来，西方国家率先走上了现代化道路。伴随着地理大发现、启蒙运动和工业革命等历史事件所积聚的强大动力，西欧的现代化运动兴起并逐渐扩散至世界范围。马克思和恩格斯认为，资产阶级开拓了世界市场，奔走于世界各地，以大工业生产和低廉的商品价格把世界上一切民族都卷入了自身的剥削牟利体系，“正像它使农村从属于城市一样，它使未开化和半开化的国家从属于文明的国家，使农民的民族从属于资产阶级的民族，使东方从属于西方”。从那时起，资本积累改变了人类文明的空间结构，又通过空间重构强化了资本积累。在资本的全球空间重组中，地方性的差异固化为发展的差异。东西方虽然同处于一个星球，但已经被分裂为两个截然不同的世界。一方是以资本为代表的西方，表现为生产的过度繁荣、巨额财富的创造、大量商品的堆积、生活的骄奢淫逸；另一方是以劳动为代表的东方，充斥着繁重的劳作与贫穷、苦难、奴役和血泪。世界作为一个繁荣和苦难缠绕、贪婪和奉献交织、金色和血色驳杂的复杂体，其间的差别甚至比沟壑纵横的自然地貌更加壁垒森严。

This situation has been fundamentally reversed by the successful practice of Chinese-path modernization. After the founding of New China, especially since reform and opening up, our Party has unequivocally taken the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics, insisted on placing the development of the country and the nation on the basis of its own strength, firmly grasped the destiny of China's development and progress in its own hands, and successfully advanced and expanded Chinese-path modernization. The successful practice of Chinese-path modernization is rapidly narrowing the development gap between East and West. In contrast, problems such as the malfunctioning of capitalist social systems, political incapacity, and social disorder are constantly being exposed, revealing their exhaustion. East and West, these two terms, are shedding the colors of the old world order system with the rapid development of Chinese-path modernization and are reverting to their original meanings in a natural geographical sense.

这一局面被中国式现代化的成功实践所根本扭转。新中国成立后特别是改革开放以来，我们党旗帜鲜明走中国特色社会主义道路，坚持把国家和民族发展放在自己力量的基点上，把中国发展进步的命运牢牢掌握在自己手中，成功推进和拓展了中国式现代化。中国式现代化的成功实践，正在快速缩小东方与西方的发展落差。两相对照，资本主义社会制度失灵、政治失能、社会失序等问题不断暴露、疲态尽显。东方与西方，这两个词语正在随着中国式现代化的快速发展而褪去世界旧秩序体系的色彩，回复其自然地理意义上的原初意涵。

Constructing a New Civilizational Narrative

建构新的文明叙事

Chinese-path modernization has created a new form of human civilization, adhering to a civilizational outlook of equality, mutual learning, dialogue and inclusiveness, and powerfully transcending the narrowness of Western civilizational narratives and Western-centrism.

中国式现代化创造了人类文明新形态，恪守平等、互鉴、对话、包容的文明观，有力超越了西方文明叙事的偏狭与西方中心主义色彩。

The Italian scholar Vico, known as the father of the philosophy of history, once said, "There is an ideal eternal history traversed in time by the histories of all nations, who, from whatever condition of savagery, semi-barbarism, or rudeness they may start, always arrive at civilization." Civilization is an important concept marking social progress and the advance toward a higher stage of culture, a common pursuit and lofty ideal of all nations and countries. "Things are not uniform; that is the nature of things" [1]1 A classical Chinese idiom from the *Book of Changes* (《周易》), meaning that the diversity of things is inherent and natural.; diverse civilizations are the true character of the world. The various nations and countries of the world, based on different material conditions, resource endowments, and historical and cultural traditions, create a myriad of distinctive and characteristic civilizations, jointly adorning the garden of human civilization.

被称为历史哲学之父的意大利学者维科曾说，“有一个理想的永久的历史存在着，一切民族的历史总是要通过它的，他们不论是从野蛮、半开化或粗野状态出发，总是要达到文明”。文明是标志着社会进步、走向文化高级阶段的重要概念，是各民族、国家的共同追求和崇高理想。“物之不齐，物之情也”，多样文明是世界的本色。世界上各民族、国家根据不同的物质条件、资源禀赋和历史文化传统，创造出千姿百态、特色鲜明的文明，共同装点人类文明的百花园。

However, the Europeans, who had embarked on the path of modernization earlier, discovered through the great voyages of exploration a large number of peoples and nations around the world that were more backward than themselves, thereby increasingly developing a sense of superiority about their own civilization, and gradually came to regard these newly discovered peoples and nations as barbaric and backward, forming and constantly solidifying the concepts of civilizational difference, civilizational hierarchy, and civilizational ladder. The Europeans considered themselves to be at the high and upper levels of civilization, as superior "civilized people," while all other peoples and nations were deemed by them to be uncivilized or semi-civilized lower "barbarians" in need of salvation and enlightenment. As early as the end of the 16th century, voices calling for the "civilizing and enlightening" of the indigenous peoples of the Americas emerged in British society. At that time, the charters granted by the British king to colonial companies, as well as colonial laws, contained expressions about "civilizing" and "saving" the Indians. The German scholar Norbert Elias believed that after the 18th century, "the concept of civilization had already become a justification for France's own national expansion and colonial movement," and "those peoples who pursued colonial policies and thereby became the upper classes in vast regions outside Europe used their sense of superiority and consciousness of civilization as a tool to justify colonial rule." According to this understanding full of arrogance and prejudice, the Europeans established a set of civilizational order worldwide by force, and constructed a corresponding civilizational narrative. This civilizational narrative was not only a set of theoretical shackles with a strong Western-centric and ideological color, but also a blatant defense of the European colonizers' aggression, slaughter, and even colonial wars against the world. The so-called "Western civilization" became, with great fanfare, the fig leaf and justification for the barbarism of modernity.

可是，较早走上现代化之途的欧洲人通过大航海，在世界各地发现了大量落后于自身的民族、国家，因而日益增长了自身文明的优越感，并逐渐将这些新发现的民族、国家都视为野蛮和落后的，形成并不断固化了文明差异、文明等级、文明阶梯的观念。欧洲人自认为处在文明的高阶和上层，是高等的“文明人”，除此之外的民族、国家则被他们认为是未开化或半开化的低等“野蛮人”，需要被拯救和教化。早在16世纪末，英国社会就出现了“文明教化”美洲原住民的声音，当时英国国王授予殖民公司的特许状以及殖民地法律中，都有“开化”和“拯救”印第安人的表述。德国学者诺贝特·埃利亚斯认为，18世纪以后，“文明概念已经变成了法国为自己进行民族扩张和殖民运动的辩护词”，“那些推行殖民政策并因此而成了欧洲以外广大地区上等阶层的民族，便将自身的优越感和文明的意识作为了为殖民统治辩护的工具”。欧洲人按照这一充满傲慢与偏见的理解，凭借武力在世界范围内建立起一套文明秩序，并建构了相应的文明叙事。这一文明叙事不仅是一套具有强烈西方中心主义和意识形态色彩的理论枷锁，更是赤裸裸地为欧洲殖民者对世界的侵略、屠杀乃至殖民战争辩护。所谓的“西方文明”，堂而皇之地成为现代性的野蛮的遮羞布和辩护词。

General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasizes: "The modernization of Western countries is

习近平总书记强调：“西方国家的现代化，充满战争、贩奴、殖民、掠夺等血腥罪恶，给广大发展中国家带来深重苦难。中华民族经历了西方列强侵略、凌辱的悲惨历史，深知和平的宝贵，决不可能重复西方国家的老路。”中国共产党领导的中国式现代化，以旧邦新命的历史自信创造了人类文明新形态，始终坚持平等、互鉴、对话、包容的文明观，倡导以文明交流超越文明隔阂、文明互鉴超越文明冲突、文明包容超越文明优越，书写了具有鲜明文化主体性的真正的文明叙事，为构建人类命运共同体注入了持久而深厚的文明力量，体现着推动人类社会进步、维护世界和平发展的时代担当。

(Author: Wang Guang, Distinguished Researcher of the Research Center for Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, and Director of the Marxist Historical Theory Research Office, Institute of Historical Theory)

（作者：王广，系中国社会科学院习近平新时代中国特色社会主义思想研究中心特约研究员、历史理论研究所马克思主义历史理论研究室主任）

Online editor: Huihui

网络编辑：慧慧