Robert Kuhn, who has studied China for nearly 30 years, said that China's new era is full of changes, opportunities and challenges, and under the leadership of President Xi Jinping, China has set the trajectory, in all vital areas, of the country's domestic development and international engagement for the next 30-plus years, to midcentury.

"When future historians reconstruct the long history of China, they will likely circle our years as an epochal period of transition and transformation," Kuhn said.

Andrew Moody discussed his understanding of the new era’s influence in the echoes he hears from other countries.

"China's entering into a new era could be a momentous turning point in world history. … China's new era is a new and confident China striding forward into a world that it itself would play a large part in shaping," Moody said.