The Understanding China Conference (UCC) was launched by the China Institute for Innovation and Development Strategy (CIIDS) in 2013 in collaboration with the Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs, the People’s Governments of Beijing Municipality and Guangdong Province and world-renowned think tanks. As a CIIDS flagship full-scale international event, the UCC invites globally recognized statesmen, strategists, business leaders, academics and media professionals to join their Chinese counterparts for in-depth dialogues, and has well established itself over the years as one of the most influential platforms for the world to understand China’s development strategies.

President Xi Jinping has been giving his kind attention to and warm support for the Conference since day one, having met with the international guests for three times and sent four congratulatory messages over the past decade. In 2021, the President addressed the opening ceremony of the Conference via video remarks. In March 2020, the UCC was formally recognized by the Central Party and State authorities as a regular international event, with Secretariat housed at CIIDS, scheduled to take place following the conclusion of the CPC Central Committee yearly plenum or the CPC National Congress under the guidance of the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee and the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 

On December 1-3, 2023, the Understanding China Conference was held in Guangzhou, China for the fourth consecutive year. Themed “China’s New Endeavors Amid Unprecedented Global Changes——Expanding the Convergence of Interests and Building a Community with Shared Future”, the three-day event gathered guests from China and beyond for in-depth dialogues and full exchanges of views, to demonstrate China’s unwavering commitment to high-quality development, higher-level opening up and continued reform, boost the world’s confidence in expanding the convergence of interests and building a community with shared future, and, on top of it all, to help the world better understand China in the new era and the governing Communist Party of China.