Wang Li: Common Prosperity: the “Chinese Solution” [1] for Achieving Fairness and Justice

General Secretary Xi Jinping has pointed out that Chinese-path modernization is the modernization of common prosperity for all people. Common prosperity is an essential requirement of socialism with Chinese characteristics and is also a long-term historical process. We persist in taking the realization of the people’s aspirations for a better life as the starting point and ultimate goal of modernization, striving to maintain and promote social fairness and justice, working to promote common prosperity for all people, and resolutely preventing polarization. Common prosperity is not only China’s practice regarding fairness and justice but is also a “signatory concept” and core category of the theory concerning fairness and justice. The theoretical summarization and systemic construction of common prosperity lay a solid theoretical foundation for advancing and realizing the “Chinese solution” for fairness and justice.

The Great Practice of Socialist Fairness and Justice

Fairness and justice have been value ideals of human society since ancient times, acting as the value yardstick for measuring comprehensive social progress and the core theoretical issue explored by political philosophy. As an ideal and concept, fairness and justice are not hollow abstractions remote from reality; rather, they are consistent with the historical process and essential requirements of social development. Fairness and justice are essential requirements of socialism. Socialist fairness and justice uphold the fundamental interests of all people, and the "people-centeredness" ^[1] is the fundamental value orientation of socialist fairness and justice. The Communist Party of China (CPC) persists in using the basic theories of Marxism and the basic principles of materialism to guide social practice. Throughout the history of the establishment, construction, and development of socialism, the Party has always regarded the contradiction between the fulfillment of the people’s interests and needs for a better life and the inconsistencies in socialist production as the principal contradiction in society ^[2]. It takes whether the people support, approve of, are happy with, or consent to ^[3] as the fundamental standard for measuring the merits or failures of all work. On the road to common prosperity, "no one should be left behind" ^[4]. The Party earnestly ensures that the masses have a greater sense of gain, happiness, and security.

Advancing and realizing common prosperity is a great practice of Chinese socialism regarding fairness and justice. First, winning the battle against poverty, eliminating absolute poverty, and solidifying the foundation for realizing common prosperity. Poverty is a chronic malady of human society; anti-poverty and escaping poverty have long been prominent dilemmas plaguing global development and governance. Since the 18th CPC National Congress, socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a New Era. The battle against poverty achieved an absolute victory, historically eliminating absolute poverty and realizing the Xiaokang ^[5] (moderately prosperous) life—a millennial dream of the Chinese nation—creating a miracle in the history of human poverty reduction and placing our country’s development at a higher historical starting point. The comprehensive victory in the battle against poverty marks a solid step forward by our Party in uniting and leading the people to create a better life and realize common prosperity.

Second, common prosperity has been endowed with new connotations and requirements reflective of the times. These new connotations and requirements are manifested in the richer content and clearer principles involved in common prosperity. Its content is all-encompassing, including material abundance, spiritual richness, and other higher political and social requirements. When material abundance has been satisfied and enhanced to a considerable degree, the people's aspirations for a better life put forward higher demands. Not only does spiritual richness rise to become a true internal requirement, but other factors such as democracy, the rule of law, fairness, justice, security, and the environment are also inevitable demands and claims of common prosperity. Regarding principles, sharing and equality have become clearer and more definite. Common prosperity means all people sharing the fruits of social development, truly embodying the concept of justice based on the equality of all members of society. Common prosperity can only be realized in a socialist society. The theoretical conceptions and practices of fairness and justice under capitalism can only be adjustments, adaptations, or "patchwork" reforms under capitalist private ownership. Common prosperity is absolutely incompatible with capitalist inequality and polarization. The purpose of common prosperity is to continuously promote the well-rounded development of the individual, taking human needs as the key landing point and promoting development through the unification of the "human scale" and the "material scale."

Third, relying on and bringing into play the advantages of the socialist system. The socialist market economy system gives full play to the decisive role of the market in resource allocation, ensuring higher production efficiency; it also exerts the government’s macro-control functions, using the concept of sharing to solve the problem of unbalanced and inadequate development. General Secretary Xi Jinping, in an important speech at the opening ceremony of a study session for principal leading officials at the provincial and ministerial level to study and implement the spirit of the 20th CPC National Congress, pointed out: "We must both create higher efficiency than capitalism and more effectively maintain social fairness, better realizing the coordination, mutual promotion, and unification of efficiency and fairness." We must construct a multi-tiered distribution mechanism, giving full play to the roles of primary distribution, redistribution, and third-party distribution ^[6], effectively balancing the roles of all factors such as labor, technology, capital, and management in the market economy to ensure fairness in distribution. We must construct a minimum living security system and framework to provide social members with basic employment security, elderly care, subsistence security, education and cultural services, and health security, ensuring all people live a dignified and satisfying life. Comprehensive institutional guarantees and practices have laid a solid institutional foundation for the realization of common prosperity.

Finally, formulating a clear and definite "roadmap" to ensure orderly progress. Common prosperity is divided into two practical stages: first, from 2020 to 2035, basically realizing socialist modernization, with "solid steps taken toward common prosperity for all people"; second, from 2035 to the middle of this century, building China into a great modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious, and beautiful. By that time, "common prosperity for all people will be basically realized, and our people will enjoy a happier and safer life." China’s stipulations on the essence of socialism, the content of common prosperity, the upholding of principles, institutional guarantees, and the roadmap have powerfully realized the sharing of social cooperation benefits by all people. Whether from basic theoretical cognition or institutional practice, the advancement and practice of common prosperity have greatly promoted social fairness and justice.

The Theoretical Sublimation of Socialist Fairness and Justice

The great practice and achievements of common prosperity need to be summarized by building our own theory of justice. Contemporary China is undergoing the most extensive and profound social transformation in our country's history and is carrying out the most grand and unique practical innovation in human history.

For over 100 years, the CPC has led the Chinese people to achieve extraordinary success in socialist revolution, construction, and reform, completing a modernization process in decades that took the West centuries, and achieving changes and successes in socialist construction that are obvious to the whole world. Advancing the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity, developing whole-process people's democracy, comprehensively building a Xiaokang society, historically solving the problem of absolute poverty, promoting common prosperity for all people, and building a community with a shared future for humanity—these major practices and achievements regarding fairness and justice cannot be explained by the theoretical framework of any Western school of political philosophy, any theoretical model of any sect, or the theory of justice of any philosopher. The practice and achievements of contemporary China have long since broken through the frameworks and boundaries of existing Western political philosophy and theories of justice; there is an urgent need for our own theory to explain, summarize, and sublimate these practices, and to profoundly and comprehensively answer the questions of the new era.

Common prosperity is a conceptual category that crystallizes China’s major social practices and theoretical cognitions regarding fairness and justice. Concepts are forms of human thinking and the fruits of human knowledge. Common prosperity is the theoretical vision, conceptual system, and ideological framework through which we grasp the fairness and justice of Chinese society. It not only hallmarks our important practices regarding fairness and justice but also incorporates unique elements from Chinese philosophical thought, which has thousands of years of history, culture, and civilizational tradition. It is an "original concept" and "signatory concept" through which China characterizes its thoughts on fairness and justice. Common prosperity provides a conceptual system for constructing China’s theory of fairness and justice in a specialized, academic, and systematic manner. Fairness and justice are values and ideals pursued by all societies, but they are not empty; they are inseparable from social practice and theoretical cognition. In the historical practice of socialism, the elimination of absolute poverty, the comprehensive building of a Xiaokang society, the fulfillment of needs for a better life, the elimination of polarization, and the sharing of interests constitute the basic connotation of common prosperity through their roles as methods, goals, principles, and concepts. Together with other concepts, common prosperity as a core category constructs a socialist theory of fairness and justice. Great social practices and achievements, along with theoretical summaries and systemic constructions, have laid a solid scholarly and academic foundation for common prosperity and its associated fairness and justice. In the historical practice and theoretical construction of fairness and justice, common prosperity is undoubtedly the “Chinese solution” contributed to the world by China’s advancement and practice of fairness and justice.

(The author is a professor at the School of Philosophy, Renmin University of China) Source: Guangming Daily February 6, 2025 Web Editor: Huihui