ON June 26, an internal flight took the international delegation of 11 Communist parties from nine countries to the lush, green, mountainous province of Guizhou, south-central China.

There we stayed at the sumptuous Guizhou Provincial Party School. It comprises two buildings of residential, teaching and restaurant facilities set in spectacular grounds. With more than 300 teaching, administrative and research staff, it trains hundreds of members of the Communist Party of China (CPC) for state, government and party posts.

An evening visit to the Guiyang Grand Theatre provided a lavish feast of Guizhou culture as colourful troupes of dancers, singers and musicians from the Miao, Dong, Tujia, Buyi and Shui nationalities performed their stunning tableaux.

There as elsewhere, we met with friendly faces, children asking “Hello, where are you from?” and artists eager to be filmed alongside us. This might be related to the scarcity of xenophobic and anti-Western propaganda in China’s mass media, where the emphasis is on co-operation and friendship between peoples and nations.

The National Big Data Exchange and Experience Centre is located in a digital industrial park in Guiyang City, the provincial capital. It is just one of several ultra-modern, hi-tech projects that demonstrate the CPC’s commitment to balanced development across China.

The Centre’s interactive displays and exhibitions indicate how cutting-edge technology can be used to improve traffic flows, protect the environment, enhance the distribution of medicines and even make tax collection more efficient.

The Jinyuan Community in Guiyang City is a little gem of 11,000 people and families of all ages, complete with over 200 small enterprises, a school, parks and gardens, and a community centre with library and computer rooms.

Community director Yuan Qin spends her days and evenings solving residents’ problems — some collected via QR pads dotted around the community — and organising classes for everything from computers to dancing. Recently a delegate to the CPC’s 20th congress, her enthusiasm was infectious.

When presenting her with a banner and a badge from Britain, I asked whether the CPC would give her a free temporary transfer to some of our local communities so badly in need of hope and imagination.  

At a banquet hosted by Wu Gangping, vice-president of the Guizhou Party School, I said that Jinyuan offered a glimpse of the co-operative, communist future that Marx detected in the New Lanark community in Scotland, founded by Robert Owen in the early 1800s.

Like many of our Chinese hosts, comrade Wu wanted to know more about British politics and the machinations of the Conservative and Labour parties. Naturally, they were warned not to place too much credibility in the Guardian newspaper’s analysis of British, European and international politics.  

“Governance” is a core concept in the Guizhou Party School’s curriculum. Based on principles of autonomy, grassroots involvement, law-based rules, virtue (echoes of Robespierre’s Republic of Virtue), the interests of the people and modernisation, Professor Qiu Zhonghui showed how socialist governance would be incompatible with rule in a class-divided society which serves the interests of a capitalist class.

Answering a question about the collective role of the organised working class in the governance of modern China, as distinct from those of the CPC and community bodies, he responded:

“The working class and the labour movement are a pioneering force in our revolutionary process and should play a major part in governance.

“The role of the trade unions is to protect workers’ rights. The interests of the working class cannot come before the interests of all; our common aim is to build a socialist society through governance.”

On the following day, a high-speed bullet train took us 86 miles (138km) in 45 minutes to the Zunyi Municipal Party School. There, Professor Yang Heying described the four defining periods in the history of the CPC since it proclaimed its supreme aim in 1921 to “realise the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”

These periods are the “new democratic revolution” (1921-49); “socialist revolution and construction” (1949-78); “reform, opening-up and socialist modernisation” (1978-2012); and “socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era,” ongoing since 2012.

She also explained the significance of the Zunyi conference in January 1935. Buses took us to the historic house and courtyard where a CPC-Red Army summit changed the course of Chinese history during the Long March.

There, the young Mao Zedong successfully opposed the failed, adventurist tactics of the party leadership, assumed political command of the Red Army and secured a leading position in the CPC politburo alongside Zhou Enlai and Zhu De.

We were back in Guiyang in time for the evening dinner.

Next morning, June 29, the delegation strolled through Qingyan Ancient Town, full of lovingly preserved Ming dynasty houses, courtyards, cobbled lanes and temples going back to the 15th and 16th centuries.  

Then the international delegation bade farewell to our Guizhou hosts at the provincial party school. To our great surprise, after a round of speeches, we were then revealed as the stars of a professionally produced film — set, naturally, to the strains of The Internationale — depicting our perambulations through the province.

Each delegate then received a video cassette and a large glossy 70-page book of the film in glorious technicolour, all produced in less than 24 hours.    

Robert Griffiths is general secretary of the Communist Party of Britain.