Illustration: Chen Xia/GT

More finger-pointing have been surfacing from US and other Western media outlets against China's recent moves to regulate its market. They claimed that China is taking "a backward step" and deviating from the fundamental experience that led the country toward prosperity. They even predicted that China's economy would suffer long-term damage.

Yet, over the past few decades, those pessimistic predictions from the West media about China have never turned out to be accurate. If they were half as reliable, China would have collapsed several times, and its economy would have already declined to the point where US elites would not bother to pay attention to it anymore. But China's governance and development are like boulders on the shore, while the West's badmouthing China is like sea foam that comes up to the surface and splashes the boulders again and again.

This round of market regulation in China aims to optimize the governance of the market environment and regulate business practices. This way, all enterprises can compete more fairly to achieve lasting and sound economic development. Promoting common prosperity is a long-term ideal and pursuit of China as a socialist country. Due to its accumulated experience, Chinese society now firmly believes that the rapid development of the country is the basis and prerequisite for achieving common prosperity. We are aware of the dialectical relationship between "making the cake bigger" and "sharing the cake fairly."

What China has been doing is fighting against monopoly, safeguarding national security in the economic field, protecting the interests of the workers, preventing and resolving major risks. These are the laws and rules that must be built on the path toward a prosperous market economy. Such economic governance is not new to the world, but Western media outlets have kept pinning political labels on China's relevant practices, cursing China to fail. This is worth pondering for Chinese people. 

China is not the isolated country and the isolated economy as it used to be. Everything we do is within the context of a complex international environment and the rapid convergence of information from China and abroad through the internet. Information from the outside world can impact and disturb us, and some people inside China cannot help but compare the domestic situation with external ones. These circumstances constitute the urgency that China's major social policies must succeed.

China has both political consciousness advantage and institutional strength. This enables the country to discover problems early in their development and accumulation process, making relevant decisions in time or even in advance and being able to turn those decisions into action. Many countries cope with problems only after a crisis takes place, and worse, in a perfunctory manner. But China plans ahead and acts resolutely.

China's recent market interventions and policy adjustments enjoy deep-seated support from the country's public opinion. They respond to real problems and people's genuine wishes. The test for China is how to accomplish the tasks and create long-term dividends for the Chinese society.

It will be a tremendous social practice and exploration to boost the development of private enterprises, while making sure their growth conforms to China's legal system and social vision. It is the same with common prosperity - an ideal of human society that lasts forever, but not easy to promote. An ideal can never be realized through words, but through deeds. For the moment, reforms in the West are stuck in silence while public opinion there is busy pointing fingers at China, while China is the true doer who is slow in speech yet quick in action. 

China has been at the forefront of developing countries, and we are determined to take a modernization path that is different from that of capitalism. We must have the sobriety and confidence that are indispensable to an entrepreneur and explorer. We must have the ability to make decisions and adjustments during the process. The effects of China's long-term development and the people's actual satisfaction will speak for us. 

China must maintain a development pace that is faster than those of other major global economies for a long time. This is a key to prove what China has done is right. China must also make substantive progress in realizing common prosperity. Chinese society should not only be more equal than that of developing countries, but also achieve fairness and justice more effectively than developed societies. China's epidemic fight demonstrates that China is far ahead of the West in protecting people's rights amid crises. But this is not enough, and we need to do more. 

China won't take backward steps. Reform and opening-up is a great leap forward and today's adjustments aim at the country's new progress. China will seize the day but won't act recklessly. Results-orientation is one of the most important governance logics followed by China. Beliefs and purposes such as seeking truth from facts and serving the people are the foundation for every China's new policy and guide the practice and implementation of the policies. Westerners shouldn't take their likes and dislikes for granted if they want to predict the future of China.