OTTAWA, July 6 (Xinhua) -- The founding of the Communist Party of China (CPC) marked a turning point in world history, said David Lethbridge, former research director of the Bethune Institute for Anti-Fascist Studies in Canada.

Speaking highly of China's reform and opening up, Lethbridge, a member of the Communist Party of Canada, said, "what has impressed me most has been the difficult but successful program to lift all Chinese people out of poverty."

"This has been a magnificent achievement as, I believe, the United Nations has also asserted. I have also been very impressed by the Belt and Road Initiative helping to bind the world together through peaceful mutual trade and cooperation," said Lethbridge.

Meanwhile, Lethbridge warned against the U.S. attempt to split China into fragments.

"Imperialism will never cease in its attempts to control the whole world. The United States seeks to become the dominant and exclusive hegemon," he said, calling on countries across the world to "do what they can to prevent this while at the same time preventing war."

Lethbridge also recalled Canadian physician Norman Bethune, whose medical team went to China in 1938 to help the Chinese people fight Japanese invasion troops during World War II and died there in 1939.

Bethune, a member of the Communist Party of Canada, brought modern medicine to China and treated innumerable sick villagers and wounded soldiers. His selfless commitment made a profound impression on the Chinese people, who hold events every year in memory of him.

Asked what people can learn from Bethune, Lethbridge pointed to Bethune's speech at the opening of a model hospital in China in 1938. "You and we are internationalists; we recognize no race, no color, no language, no national boundaries to separate and divide us," said Bethune.

"This speech demonstrated Bethune's fine grasp of Marxist dialectics not only in theory but in practice," said Lethbridge, suggesting this speech be studied carefully and repeatedly.

These "words could be applied to China today, and indeed to the whole world today," he said.