'Everyone needs to ponder carefully Xi Jinping's words," said Ella Rule, chairperson of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist), who said she was greatly impressed by what the president said at the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.

"Everything he had to say was in line with our policy of trying to build support for China and the understanding that China is the best friend of the British working people," Rule said in a speech broadcast at Vision China, a virtual event held by China Daily on Wednesday.

Rule, who turns 80 next year, took early retirement as a law lecturer in the United Kingdom in 1995. Since then, she has devoted herself full time to the cause of advancing Communism.

In 2018, she was appointed chairperson of her party after its founder, Harpal Brar, retired. Last year, she was reelected to the position.

Her feelings about Xi's words were deepened, she said, because of her childhood memories of war.

She quoted his words: "In pursuing modernization, China will not tread the old path of war, colonization and plunder taken by some countries… We will stand on the right side of history and of human progress. Dedicated to peace, development, cooperation and mutual benefit, we will strive to safeguard world peace and development…"

Rule, who was born in London in 1943 as German bombs fell on the city, said she felt nervous about planes flying overhead until she was in her late teens.

"Comrade Xi Jinping's words echo the deep desire of people all over the world for peace, harmony and cooperation, in complete contrast to the utterances of the imperialist warmongers who govern this country, as well as the United States, Japan and the countries of the European Union," she said.

Rule attended a symposium at the Chinese embassy in the UK to discuss Xi's words, and said the CPC's fighting spirit and firm determination to never yield to coercive power struck her most.

She agreed with Xi's observation that "it takes a good blacksmith to forge good steel" and welcomed the appointment of the CPC's new leadership team, saying "all members … are devoted servants of the people and the hard study of Marxism-Leninism (which she said is the ideology of the proletariat), hard work, incorruptibility and dedication."

She also expressed admiration for the CPC's achievement of moderate prosperity for all, and the lifting of 100 million rural residents out of poverty, the success in combating the COVID-19 epidemic, and the completion of unprecedented infrastructure projects.

"I cannot help thinking how this contrasts with the situation in even rich imperialist countries, where the masses of the people are becoming steadily poorer, the death rate from COVID was infinitely higher than in China and where infrastructure tends to be neglected in the interests of a tiny minority of billionaires who appropriate for themselves the bulk of the profits generated by workers, expending as little as possible on wages, social services, infrastructure, etc," she said.

Speaking on behalf of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist), Rule said, "In any conflict between imperialism on the one hand and the People's Republic of China on the other, we can be counted on side with the People's Republic of China."