Zhu Fengming: Coordinating High-Quality Development and High-Efficiency Governance in the Process of Chinese Modernization
Since the 18th CPC National Congress, China’s economic and social development has achieved world-renowned successes, and the stage of development has gradually shifted from high-speed growth to high-quality development. Faced with increasingly complex international and domestic situations, the importance of high-efficiency governance has become ever more prominent. In the process of modernization, China's systems, China's governance, and China's development have achieved a high degree of integration. This has formed a virtuous cycle in which reform promotes development, development promotes stability, and stability provides a favorable social environment and foundation for further reform and development, thereby realizing the organic unity of development and governance, as well as the organic unity of vitality and order.
In May 2024, during an inspection tour in Henan, Xi Jinping emphasized the need to "strive to compose a new chapter of promoting Chinese-path modernization on the Central Plains through high-quality development and high-efficiency governance." This profoundly revealed that high-quality development and high-efficiency governance are powerful supports and guarantees for advancing the process of Chinese-path modernization. Currently, under the dual challenges of profound transformations in the global governance system and the domestic transition toward high-quality development, how to further enhance national governance efficiency to better promote high-quality development has become an important proposition for ensuring the steady and long-term progress of Chinese-path modernization.
I. The Organic Unity of High-Quality Development and High-Efficiency Governance
"The real content of all epoch-making systems is formed by the needs of the time in which they arose." Based in the New Era, the coordinated promotion of high-quality development and high-efficiency governance is precisely a major systemic innovation that conforms to the changes in the principal contradiction in Chinese society and the needs of modernization construction. Closely following the requirements of development and the urgencies of governance, the Communist Party of China has, while independently advancing institutional construction, deeply integrated the practical requirements of high-quality development with the institutional guarantees of high-efficiency governance. By consolidating the foundation of development through governance efficiency and testing the effectiveness of governance through the quality of development, the Party has not only responded to the theoretical tensions between development and governance in contemporary China but also built a solid practical support for the modernization of national governance.
(1) The Connotations of High-Quality Development and High-Efficiency Governance
"High-quality development is development that can well meet the people's ever-growing needs for a better life; it is development that embodies the New Development Philosophy [1]; it is development where innovation becomes the primary driver, coordination becomes an endogenous characteristic, green becomes the universal form, openness becomes the only way, and sharing becomes the fundamental purpose." Its core lies in achieving a more efficient, balanced, and sustainable development model through systemic transformation, marking a key transition of the Chinese economy from a stage of quantitative accumulation to a stage of qualitative breakthrough. The proposal of this strategy is based on the change in the principal contradiction in our society and the transition of economic stages; the logic of development must necessarily shift from the extensive model of pursuing scale and speed in the past to an intensive model prioritizes quality and benefit. Marx pointed out in Capital: "Social forces act exactly like natural forces: blindly, forcibly, destructively, so long as we do not understand them and fail to take them into reckoning. But once we come to know them, and understand their activity, their direction and their effects, it depends only on ourselves to subject them more and more to our own will, and by means of them to reach our own objects." High-quality development is precisely a profound grasp and proactive application of the laws of economic development. By actively adjusting development strategies, it ensures that economic development better serves the needs of the people and the long-term interests of the nation.
First, high-quality development emphasizes a fundamental increase in resource allocation efficiency. By deepening supply-side structural reform, it corrects the problem of resource misallocation and establishes a mechanism for market-based allocation of factors characterized by "effective incentive of property rights, free flow of factors, flexible price response, fair and orderly competition, and survival of the fittest among enterprises." Simultaneously, addressing market failures in fields with strong externalities such as basic research, it strengthens the national innovation system. Through government guidance and market synergy, it seeks breakthroughs in key core technologies to inject innovative momentum into efficiency enhancement. Second, it focuses on the coordination of development. By implementing the strategy for coordinated regional development and the rural revitalization strategy, it promotes the rational flow of resources toward the central and western regions and rural areas. Finally, it pursues the shared nature of development fruits. By continuously improving the quality of education, employment, and social security, it ensures that development fruits benefit all people more extensively and fairly, especially low-income groups. This is both an embodiment of the essential characteristic of common prosperity in the socialist system and a practical transformation of the requirement that "making the people live a good life is the starting point and endgame of all our work." This transcendence of pure economic efficiency is not a negation of efficiency itself, but rather the achievement of a dynamic balance between market efficiency and social equity. It is clear that high-quality development is the concretization of the New Development Philosophy; it requires both giving full play to the decisive role of the market in resource allocation and using institutional innovation and policy guidance to compensate for market defects and achieve broader social benefits, ultimately serving the construction of a modern economic system and the formation of a New Development Paradigm [2].
Governance refers to the dynamic process of decision-making, execution, and supervision of public affairs through the collaborative cooperation of diverse subjects such as the government, social organizations, enterprises, and citizens. Its core is the decentralization of power and shared responsibility, and its practical scope covers the local, national, and international levels. National governance refers to the process by which the state, through institutions, policies, laws, and other tools, coordinates diverse subjects—including the government, social organizations, and citizens—to manage public affairs, maintain social order, and promote public interest. The essence of national governance lies in regulating power and optimizing the allocation of social resources. It covers dimensions such as politics, economy, society, culture, and ecology; it includes levels such as global and regional governance, national governance, local governance, and grassroots social governance; it involves sectors such as the government, market, and society; and it encompasses links such as decision-making, support, execution, evaluation, and supervision, categorized into regular and irregular governance.
"Efficiency-efficacy" (xiaoneng) is composed of "effect" (xiao) and "ability" (neng) [3]. It refers to an actor exercising talent to achieve a goal; "high efficiency-efficacy" implies being effective and acting in a way conducive to goal realization. High-efficiency governance, as a multi-dimensional and integrated governance system, takes governance philosophy, subjects, goals, methods, paths, and patterns as its core elements. Through the scientific nature of policy, high efficiency in execution, and systematicity of the framework, it achieves a dynamic balance between national development and social stability. Governance subjects guide the people to identify with governance philosophies and endorse development goals by establishing objectives, constructing governance systems, and designing institutional norms, thereby promoting the coordinated development of the state and society. Its key elements include the authority of governance subjects, the guidance of philosophy, the leading nature of goals, and the systematic nature of governance systems and capabilities. It emphasizes the role of top-level design, stresses the link between institutional norms and public identification, and achieves—through the synergy of various elements—the interactive balance between governance subjects and objects, the coordinated transformation of philosophy and practice, the organic integration of value pursuits and goal settings, and the dialectical unity of governance purposes and instrumental means. High-efficiency governance is not a product of theoretical deduction but an original concept that condenses the practical experience and wisdom of our national governance. With the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics as its fundamental support, it adheres to the people-centered value stance and constructs a collaborative governance model led by the Party committee, directed by the government, and characterized by the active participation of diverse subjects.
(2) High-Quality Development and High-Efficiency Governance Complement Each Other
High-quality development and high-efficiency governance are an organically coupled and synergistically advancing whole within the process of modernizing national governance. From theoretical origins to practical logic, the two maintain a dialectical unity where development determines governance needs and governance guarantees development quality, while both jointly serve the fundamental value orientation of being "people-centered."
1. Theoretical Logic: The two are unified in the essential requirements of the modernization of the national governance system. From the perspective of Marxist state theory, "Political rule is everywhere based on the exercise of a social function, and political rule can jump into existence only where it exercises this social function." High-efficiency governance is the core way the state performs social functions, and its fundamental goal is to provide a stable institutional environment and public services for development. High-quality development, as the core carrier for the realization of social functions, has a quality and direction that in turn determines the focus and path of governance. In the contemporary Chinese context, high-quality development is the theme of China's economic and social development during the 14th Five-Year Plan period and beyond, while high-efficiency governance is the key content of promoting the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity. The two are jointly rooted in the soil of the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics and are unified in the modernization of the national governance system. Xi Jinping clearly pointed out: "Promoting the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity means adapting to the changes of the times, both by reforming systems, mechanisms, laws, and regulations that do not meet the requirements of practical development, and by constantly constructing new ones, so that systems in all aspects become more scientific and complete, realizing the institutionalization, standardization, and proceduralization of the governance of Party, state, and social affairs." This further clarifies that the core of high-efficiency governance lies in providing systematic guarantees for development across all fields through institutional improvement and process optimization. Simultaneously, the pursuit of quality priority and the unity of efficiency and equity in high-quality development pushes the governance system to continuously optimize in reverse. Theoretically, the two form a progressive logic of demand, response, and optimization, jointly advancing the national governance system toward a more scientific and complete direction.
2. Practical Logic: High-efficiency governance is an important guarantee for high-quality development, while high-quality development is the value orientation of high-efficiency governance. On the one hand, high-efficiency governance provides a triple guarantee of institutional support, resource coordination, and risk prevention for high-quality development. "The institution is nothing more than the product of the intercourse that has hitherto existed between individuals." The core function of high-efficiency governance is to regulate the order of intercourse and reduce development costs through institutional design and execution. Specifically, this is reflected in improving the property rights protection system and the system for market-based allocation of factors, creating a fair competition environment for market entities, and stimulating innovation and creative vitality. It also involves constructing a scientific development appraisal and evaluation system to break the "GDP-only" orientation and guide local governments to shift their focus toward quality improvement and structural optimization. "High-quality development is the primary task of building a modern socialist country in all respects," and to achieve this primary task, one must rely on the resource coordination capacity of high-efficiency governance. By coordinating the relationships between the central and local levels, the government and the market, and short-term goals and long-term interests, it avoids fragmentation and short-sightedness in development, ensuring the systematicity and sustainability of high-quality development. On the other hand, high-quality development provides the value orientation and the standard for testing the capacity of high-efficiency governance. High-efficiency governance is not an abstract concept; it is measured by the results of high-quality development. Whether governance is efficient depends critically on whether it can promote the improvement of development quality and whether it can solve the problems of unbalanced and inadequate development. The ultimate goal of high-efficiency governance is to clear obstacles for high-quality development by optimizing governance processes and enhancing governance effectiveness, thereby meeting the people's needs for a better life. At the same time, the New Development Philosophy of innovation, coordination, green, openness, and sharing in high-quality development also sets specific goals for high-efficiency governance. In practice, high-quality development and high-efficiency governance form a relationship that emphasizes both guarantee and leadership, jointly promoting economic and social development toward a path that is of higher quality, more efficient, more equitable, and more sustainable.
3. Value Logic: Both jointly serve the fundamental standpoint of being "people-centered." Marx and Engels pointed out in the Manifesto of the Communist Party: "The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority." This established the value foundation of socialist development and governance. In contemporary China, high-quality development is reflected not only in the quality of economic growth but also in the quality of sharing development results. Its core goal is to meet the people's needs for better education, more stable jobs, more reliable social security, and higher-level medical and health services through development. High-efficiency governance is not purely efficiency-oriented; it takes people's satisfaction as the fundamental standard, solving the urgent problems that concern the people by optimizing governance processes and improving service levels. High-quality development answers the question of what to develop for the people, focusing on the content and quality of development; by improving development quality, it creates richer material and spiritual wealth for the people. High-efficiency governance answers the question of how to guarantee development for the people, focusing on the guarantees and paths of development; by optimizing governance efficiency, it provides fairer development opportunities and higher-quality public services for the people. High-quality development and high-efficiency governance always take the people's interests as the fundamental starting point and endgame, jointly demonstrating the distinctive characteristics of the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics.
II. Basic Experience of High-Quality Development and High-Efficiency Governance in the Process of Chinese-path Modernization
In the process of Chinese-path modernization, we must scientifically coordinate five pairs of relationships: economy and society, government and market, efficiency and equity, vitality and order, and development and security. We must reveal the underlying logic of economic and social operations and clarify the value orientation and practical path of national governance, providing theoretical guidance for promoting high-quality development and high-efficiency governance.
(1) Correctly Handling the Relationship Between the Economy and Society
Correcting the relationship between the economy and society in the process of modernization serves as the core link sustaining the deep integration of high-quality development and high-efficiency governance. It determines not only the stability of the national developmental landscape but also directly relates to the immediate interests of the masses [6]. On one hand, economic growth provides the necessary material support for social development; robust economic strength is the foundation for improving the social security system, raising public service levels, and promoting social construction such as technological innovation. In his Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Marx profoundly pointed out: "The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life." This clarified the foundational status of economic construction in social development. From establishing the development policy of "taking economic construction as the center" in the early period of Reform and Opening-up to focusing on high-quality economic development in the New Era, China has consistently taken the liberation and development of social productive forces as its core task. Through measures such as industrial structure optimization, breakthroughs in technological innovation, and the stimulation of market vitality, national economic strength has continuously increased, providing a solid resource guarantee for social undertakings such as the popularization of education, medical upgrades, and the improvement of social security.
On the other hand, the counter-action of social development on economic growth cannot be ignored. A stable social order, a high-quality labor force, and an equitable development environment are vital supports for sustained and healthy economic development. In the field of education, progress from the anti-illiteracy campaigns to the consolidation and improvement of nine-year compulsory education and the popularization of higher education has cultivated a vast pool of professional talent for economic transformation and upgrading. In the field of social security, the journey from exploring welfare systems in the early days of the People’s Republic to the national unified management of pension insurance and the broad coverage of medical insurance has not only enhanced the masses' sense of gain and security but also released consumption potential, injecting momentum into domestic demand. In the field of social governance, the shift from relying heavily on administrative forces in the early days to building a governance system characterized by the collaborative participation of diverse subjects—including government, society, enterprises, and citizens—and empowered by technology has effectively defused risks and conflicts, creating a stable and orderly social environment for economic development. At the same time, when handling the relationship between the economy and society, China has always been guided by a systems perspective [7]. "At no time should we forget one principle: the relationship between economic development and social security is like that of rising water lifting a boat. A small boat sails in shallow water, but a great ship needs deep water; if one violates these laws, the vessel will run aground or capsize." Based on the basic national condition that we are in the primary stage of socialism, we rationally determine the goals and tasks of social construction. While ensuring and improving people's livelihoods, we avoid exceeding economic capacity, thereby ensuring the sustainability of economic and social development.
(2) Correcting the Relationship Between the Government and the Market
In the process of Chinese-path modernization, through the scientific adjustment of the relationship between the government and the market, we have both effectively avoided the economic fluctuations and social imbalances caused by market failures and tangibly overcome the efficiency losses caused by excessive government intervention, thereby achieving organic coordination between the two. From a theoretical logic, although the classical Marxist writers did not directly discuss the relationship between the government and the market under the conditions of a socialist market economy, Marx's analysis of the laws governing the commodity economy in the first volume of Capital provided the theoretical cornerstone for understanding the fundamental role of the market in resource allocation. Engels' exposition on state functions in the "Theory of Force" chapter of Anti-Dühring—namely, that "political rule is everywhere based on the exercise of a social function, and political rule can only continue as long as it exercises this social function"—also provided the ideological origin for the government to play a role in macro-control. Based on China’s reform practice and breaking through the limitations of traditional cognition, Deng Xiaoping clearly stated: "Whether there is more planning or more market is not the essential difference between socialism and capitalism. A planned economy is not equivalent to socialism, because there is planning under capitalism too; a market economy is not equivalent to capitalism, because there are markets under socialism too. Both planning and markets are economic means." This laid the theoretical foundation for correctly handling the relationship between the government and the market. Xi Jinping emphasized: "Economic structural reform is the focus of comprehensively deepening reform, and the core issue is handling the relationship between the government and the market well, letting the market play the decisive role in resource allocation and letting the government play its role better." This further sublimated our Party's understanding of the laws of the socialist market economy, guiding China to continuously optimize the pattern of the government and market working in synergy in practice.
From a historical perspective, in the early years of the People's Republic, faced with a situation where everything was waiting to be rebuilt [8], China implemented a planned economy system. The government played a key role in concentrating resources to promote industrialization and lay the foundation of the national economy, accumulating initial experience in government regulation of the economy. After Reform and Opening-up, as market-oriented reforms gradually advanced—moving from "the planned economy as primary and market regulation as supplementary" to the establishment of the goal of a socialist market economy system, and then to the clear mandate to let the market play the decisive role in resource allocation while letting the government play its role better—China has continuously explored the rational boundaries of the relationship between the government and the market in practice, achieving deep synergy between an effective market and a proactive government. From the summary of experience, Chinese practice both respects market laws, relying on the market to stimulate the vitality of entities to drive high-quality development; and focuses on the government's macro-control and public service functions, providing a guarantee for high-efficiency governance by formulating development plans, improving institutional supply, and maintaining market order, thus achieving a benign interaction between economic development and social governance.
(3) Correcting the Relationship Between Efficiency and Equity
Correcting the relationship between efficiency and equity is, in essence, achieving a match between national governance capacity and governance needs through institutional adjustment. Samuel Huntington pointed out in Political Order in Changing Societies: "Modernity breeds stability, but the process of modernization breeds instability." By dynamically balancing efficiency and equity, China has avoided the traps of developmental imbalance and governance failure in the modernization process. On one hand, it strengthens the material basis and institutional resilience of national governance through efficiency improvements, ensuring that the governance system has the capacity to respond to social needs. On the other hand, it builds social consensus through the guarantee of equity, reducing conflicts in development and providing social support for high-efficiency governance. This experience of efficiency supporting development and equity guaranteeing governance provides Chinese wisdom and Chinese solutions for global governance in balancing development and equity.
The formation of this experience is inseparable from the rich practical achievements accumulated by the Communist Party of China in adjusting governance strategies around the dialectical relationship between efficiency and equity at different stages of development. In the early days of the People's Republic, faced with a state of total neglect, China guaranteed basic equity through the planned economy system. By using the institutional advantage of concentrating resources to accomplish great tasks [9], China laid an industrial foundation. While achieving initial developmental efficiency, it built a basic public service system covering both urban and rural areas, constructing a bottom line of equity for subsequent development. After Reform and Opening-up, Deng Xiaoping proposed: "Some regions and some people can get rich first, to lead and help other regions and people, gradually achieving common prosperity." This clarified a developmental approach of "efficiency first, with consideration for equity": releasing developmental potential by stimulating market vitality to drive rapid growth in the total economic volume; while emphasizing the use of tax regulation, regional cooperation, and other means to suppress the widening gap, avoiding the erosion of the developmental foundation by inequity, and providing resilient space for high-efficiency governance. Entering the New Era, as the principal contradiction in Chinese society transformed [10], the Party's grasp of the relationship between efficiency and equity became more precise, incorporating the unity of the two into the overall framework of high-quality development and high-efficiency governance. Xi Jinping emphasized: "Achieving common prosperity is not only an economic issue, but also a major political issue related to the Party's governing foundation." This clarified the value positioning of efficiency and equity in the New Era. Consequently, by improving the distribution system and building an institutional system where primary distribution, redistribution, and third distribution [11] are coordinated and complementary, China maintains the market’s decisive role in resource allocation to enhance efficiency. Simultaneously, it narrows the income gap through redistribution means such as taxation, social security, and transfer payments, and promotes the equalization of basic public services—tilting resources such as education, healthcare, and elder care toward the grassroots, rural, and underdeveloped areas—achieving a benign interaction between economic development and social governance.
(4) Correcting the Relationship Between Vitality and Order
Marx pointed out: "Social forces work exactly like forces of nature: blindly, forcibly, destructively, so long as we do not understand them and fail to take them into reckoning. But once we understand them, when we grasp their action, their direction, their effects, it depends only upon ourselves to subject them more and more to our own will, and by means of them to reach our own ends." The vitality of economic and social development must be guided by a scientific order to avoid blindness and destructiveness and be transformed into a constructive force. In the process of Chinese-path modernization, China has both broken institutional and mechanical shackles through reform to release economic and social vitality, and fortified the foundation of social order through institutional construction and governance innovation. This ensures the orderly release of social vitality through social order and enhances the endogenous power of social governance through social vitality, ensuring that vitality is always transformed into developmental efficacy within a controllable and orderly framework.
On one hand, economic vitality is activated through market-oriented reforms, while market order is maintained through the construction of the rule of law, achieving a balance between the two. Deng Xiaoping once pointed out: "In pursuing the four modernizations, we must use two hands; one hand will not do. By 'two hands,' I mean grasping construction with one hand and the legal system with the other." The experience of "grasping with both hands" is precisely about defining boundaries and providing guarantees for economic vitality through the order of the rule of law, ensuring that high-quality economic development always proceeds on a regulated track. Since Reform and Opening-up, China has established the socialist market economy system, breaking the rigid constraints of the planned economy, letting the market play the decisive role in resource allocation, and stimulating the innovative drive and competitive vitality of various market entities. It has gradually improved the legal system for the market economy; from the Civil Code to the revision of the Anti-Monopoly Law, and from the property rights protection system to the improvement of market supervision mechanisms, all these measures use the order of the rule of law to regulate market behavior and maintain fair competition, preventing vitality from degenerating into disordered competition.
On the other hand, social governance innovation is used to coordinate social vitality and social order, building a social governance community where everyone is responsible, everyone does their part, and everyone shares in the benefits. In the early period of Reform and Opening-up, as the social structure shifted from the high degree of centralization under the planned economy to pluralistic differentiation, China began to release some management authority in the social sphere, cultivating grassroots self-governing organizations such as residents' committees and villagers' committees, initially releasing the vitality of social self-regulation and self-service. Entering the New Era, faced with a new situation of profound adjustments in the pattern of social interests and increasing contradictions and risks, China has continuously broadened channels for citizen participation in public affairs and supported the development of social organizations to deepen the release of social vitality. Simultaneously, it has constantly improved the social governance system, strengthening the leading role of Party committees and the dominant role of the government, and perfecting risk prevention and conflict resolution mechanisms to fortify the foundation of stable social order. This evolutionary process—from "untying the knots to release vitality" to "improving quality and standardization"—breaks through the limitations of the traditional planned economy that emphasized order over vitality, aligning with the practical logic of Chinese-path modernization: "seeking progress while maintaining stability."
(5) Correcting the Relationship Between Development and Safety
"Security is the prerequisite for development, and development is the guarantee of security." Security builds a solid foundation of stability for development, providing an orderly field for the advancement of productive forces and the release of social vitality. Development, in turn, serves as the material basis for security, fortifying security barriers through the enhancement of comprehensive national strength and governance capacity. The dynamic balance between the two is both a value objective of high-quality development and a key benchmark for high-efficiency governance. Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, and particularly throughout the "parallel" [12] and time-compressed process of catching-up modernization, China has consistently treated development and security as a dialectically unified governance proposition. Faced with profound and complex internal and external environments across different stages, the country has effectively neutralized major risks in various fields through systemic prevention and control mechanisms. This has placed the foundations of national security and development on a more solid bedrock, achieving a dynamic balance between high-quality development and high-level security.
In the early period of the PRC, to consolidate the foundation for the start of modernization, institutional design was characterized by prioritizing security and taking development as the bedrock. In the face of imperialist blockades and threats from residual domestic forces, the state achieved concentrated resource allocation by constructing a planned economic system. Considerations for national defense security were embedded within the strategy of prioritizing heavy industry. This both completed the initial accumulation for industrialization and consolidated the newborn regime. Furthermore, specialized deployments such as the "Third Front Construction" [13] balanced regional security and the layout of development, establishing a basic security framework for subsequent reforms. Following Reform and Opening-up, as modernization entered a phase of accelerated advancement, the focus of governance shifted toward development-led security adaptation. It was emphasized that "economic work is the greatest politics at present, and economic issues are the political issues that override all else." Through market-oriented reforms, developmental vitality was unleashed, driving a rapid leap in total economic volume and providing solid material support for national security. As reforms deepened, the importance of security became increasingly prominent: "For China, the issue that overrides all others is the need for stability. Without a stable environment, nothing can be achieved, and even the results already gained will be lost." How to maintain security and stability amidst rapid development, and how to use security and stability to safeguard development, became a major question of the times for China.
In the New Era, Chinese-path modernization has moved into the stage of high-quality development. A governance pattern defined by the dynamic balance of development and security has fully formed, becoming a distinctive feature of high-efficiency governance. Facing "changes unseen in a century" [14], the Holistic Approach to National Security has expanded the scope of security to sixteen dimensions, including the economy, technology, and ecology. An "Omni-Security" [15] pattern has been constructed through institutional innovations such as the National Security Law. In practice, the "dual circulation" strategy is employed to ensure the security of industrial and supply chains, while the "bottleneck" [16] problems are resolved through technological self-reliance and strength. We both hold the bottom line of preventing systemic financial risks and consolidate the foundations of grassroots security through rural revitalization. The Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee clearly stated: "National security is an important foundation for the steady and long-term progress of Chinese-path modernization. We must comprehensively implement the Holistic Approach to National Security, improve the systems and mechanisms for maintaining national security, achieve a positive interaction between high-quality development and high-level security, and effectively ensure the long-term peace and stability of the country." This deployment marks a shift from a prioritized ranking of the two toward an institutionalized integration of synergetic symbiosis, providing a more sustainable governance solution for the modernization process.
III. Continuously Improving National Governance Efficacy to Advance High-Quality Development and Ensure the Steady and Long-Term Progress of Chinese-Path Modernization
Xi Jinping has pointed out: "The national governance system and governance capacity are a concentrated expression of a country’s institutions and its capacity to execute those institutions." In the new stage of development, facing complex and volatile domestic and international situations as well as the people’s ever-growing needs for a better life, we can only move the economy and society toward sustained and healthy development by continuously optimizing the national governance system and improving governance capacity to effectively respond to various challenges.
(1) Building an Institutional Bedrock for Industrial Upgrading and Market Fairness via a High-Efficiency System of the Rule of Law
In modern national governance, the rule of law does more than just delineate clear boundaries and provide stable expectations for economic activities—thereby effectively avoiding the uncertainty caused by policy changes and market fluctuations. It also injects lasting institutional impetus into high-quality development by regulating the relationship between the government and the market, optimizing resource allocation efficiency, and protecting the legitimate rights and interests of innovative entities. "The rule of law is the best business environment." In practice, we must exert effort across the entire chain—legislation, law enforcement, the judiciary, and law observance—to transform the advantages of the rule of law into national governance efficacy, providing systemic institutional support for high-quality development.
At the legislative level, improving the system of laws and regulations oriented toward high-quality development is the institutional prerequisite. We must persist in scientific, democratic, and law-based legislation. Following closely the trends of industrial upgrading and focusing on emerging industries and the digital economy, we must accelerate the formulation of specialized laws and regulations covering technical R&D norms, data property rights, and artificial intelligence ethics, thereby filling the regulatory gaps in new business formats. Simultaneously, the legislative process must keep channels open for market entities to participate. Through hearings and demonstrations, the opinions of enterprises, industry associations, and the public should be absorbed to ensure that rules align with national strategic orientations and manifest fairness and justice, providing clear legal boundaries and sustained impetus for industrial upgrading. At the law enforcement level, strengthening efficiency is the key to grounding the rule of law. It is necessary to establish cross-departmental and cross-regional joint enforcement mechanisms with unified standards and procedures to avoid the interference of multi-headed or repetitive enforcement on market entities. We must increase the intensity of punishment for behavior that undermines market fairness, such as monopolies, false advertising, and infringement or piracy. We must break down administrative monopolies and local protectionism to maintain a unified competitive market. Furthermore, we should promote the digitalization of law enforcement, using big data and blockchain to achieve full-process "traceable" supervision, thereby enhancing enforcement precision, reducing costs, strengthening legal authority, and effectively safeguarding the legitimate rights of market entities. At the judicial level, optimizing protection is the last line of defense for maintaining fairness. "Institutional issues are more fundamental, comprehensive, stable, and long-term in nature." The optimization of the judicial system is vital to market confidence and the investment environment, providing stable expectations for industrial upgrading. We must improve the precision and professionalism of services by establishing specialized institutions such as intellectual property courts and financial courts, and by cultivating "composite" judicial talent possessing both legal literacy and industrial knowledge. We should optimize the trial processes for industrial disputes and market competition cases and shorten their cycles. We must strengthen supervision over administrative acts and correct behaviors such as the illegal setting of market access restrictions or interference in corporate management autonomy, ensuring the decisive role of the market in resource allocation. At the level of law observance, universal law observance is the social foundation for the sustainability of the rule of law. Through policy interpretation and case presentations, we should strengthen legal publicity, guide enterprises to incorporate upgrading and innovation into the framework of the rule of law, and establish compliance incentive mechanisms that grant policy and credit preferences to law-abiding enterprises. Simultaneously, we must disseminate the concepts of the rule of law and enhance the legal awareness of citizens to form an ecosystem where the government regulates according to the law, enterprises operate according to the law, and society supervises according to the law.
(2) Clearing Efficacy Bottlenecks in Data-Driven Governance and Government Services via Digital Government Construction
Since the Fourth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee explicitly proposed the concept of "Digital Government," the construction of government informatization in China has entered a new stage of systemic advancement. In 2021, Xi Jinping noted in his congratulatory letter to the World Internet Conference Wuzhen Summit: "We should stimulate the vitality of the digital economy, enhance the efficacy of digital government, optimize the digital social environment, build a pattern of digital cooperation, and fortify digital security barriers, so that digital civilization benefits the people of all countries."
The construction of a digital government reconstructs governance models, optimizes service supply, and enhances the scientific nature of decision-making through digital technology, becoming a key breakthrough for advancing the modernization of national governance. In practice, the deep integration of digital technology into government governance processes and the data-driven optimization of public services both answer the epochal demand for digital transformation and effectively meet public expectations for precise and intelligent services, accelerating the process of governing capacity modernization. However, facing the new requirements of Chinese-path modernization, China’s digital government construction still faces problems such as unbalanced regional development and unsynchronized construction timelines. These have derived practical challenges such as difficulties in sharing government data, interconnecting systems, coordinating business operations, and reengineering governance processes, which restrict the full play of digital government utility. First, we must construct a digital governance system of "overall synergy," breaking down departmental barriers under the traditional bureaucracy. We must achieve full-cycle management of government data and upgrade government services into intelligent decision-support systems, pushing governance from fragmentation toward an "holistic" approach. Simultaneously, we must accelerate the formulation of specialized regulations and the construction of a full-chain institutional framework to support digital governance with institutional change. Second, we must promote the market-oriented allocation of data factors and the improvement of the governance system. We need to establish scientific mechanisms for data opening and protection, relying on the synergy of marketization and the rule of law to clarify the boundaries of rights and obligations for the government, enterprises, and citizens in digital space. Finally, we must strengthen the synergistic adaptation of technology and institutions, promoting the deep integration of new infrastructure and governance. We must simultaneously improve the ethical norms and risk prevention systems for digital governance to ensure that governance innovation proceeds on a stable and orderly track.
(3) Activating the Momentum of Diverse Subjects in Socio-Economic Construction via a Pattern of Consultation, Contribution, and Shared Benefits
"Consensus-building, joint contribution, and shared benefits" [17] is the core lever for activating the momentum of diverse subjects—including the government, market, and society—to participate in economic and social construction, thereby enhancing national governance efficacy and promoting high-quality development. Constructing a governance pattern of synergetic linkage among diverse subjects can release the vitality of social innovation, guarantee the fairness and inclusiveness of socio-economic construction, and coalesce the forces of all parties to fortify the foundation of modernization, achieving synchronized improvement in governance efficacy and development quality. The report of the 20th Party Congress explicitly listed "improving the social governance system, perfecting the social governance system of consultation, contribution, and shared benefits, and enhancing social governance efficacy" as a strategic deployment, which is directly related to the synergetic logic of diverse subjects in socio-economic construction.
On the one hand, institutional guarantees serve as the basis for delineating clear paths for diverse subjects to participate in socio-economic construction. Regarding the guarantee of the rule of law, we should focus on core areas of socio-economic construction and clarify the boundaries of power and the scope of responsibility for subjects such as the government, enterprises, social organizations, and the public through legislation. We must both improve the supporting regulations for social organizations to participate in industrial development, rural revitalization, and public services—reducing the institutional costs of participation for market entities and social forces—and establish "power lists" and "responsibility lists" for the government. This avoids the excessive interference of administrative power in market resource allocation, ensuring that all types of subjects participate in an orderly manner according to the law, and achieving a positive interaction between government regulation, market autonomy, and social synergy. On the other hand, mechanism innovation serves as a breakthrough to activate the momentum of diverse subjects from key dimensions of socio-economic construction. First, we must promote the simultaneous downward shift of governance responsibility and construction authority to stimulate the participation vitality of grassroots subjects. In the economic field, we must clarify the boundaries of power and responsibility between the central and local governments in industrial layout and regional development, achieving a precise connection between top-level design and local practice. In the social field, we should guide social organizations to participate in livelihood projects such as community services and elderly and childcare as "micro-cells," ensuring the public’s right to supervise and offer suggestions on public affairs. This pushes enterprises and residents to change from being bystanders to participants, forming a synergy of shared responsibility for socio-economic construction. Second, we must innovate cross-regional synergetic mechanisms to break the geographical barriers of socio-economic construction. To address the problem of unbalanced regional development, we should rely on digital platforms to achieve cross-regional sharing of industrial resources and livelihood service information. Under the unified leadership of the Party, a mechanism for balancing regional interests should be established. Third, focusing on the intersection of people's wellbeing and industrial development, we must improve the mechanisms of consultation and sharing. In the field of public services, we should construct an "Internet + Government Services" model, integrating resources in education, healthcare, and elderly care, so that the public directly enjoys high-quality services through joint construction. In the field of social development, through a diversified distribution system involving tax adjustment and charitable guidance, we can ensure that the fruits of development lean toward laborers and innovators. Simultaneously, by using big data to match enterprise support policies, we can clear the channels for public participation in industrial planning, activating the endogenous drive for the continuous participation of diverse subjects.
(4) Achieving Better Benefits for the People from Development Results via the Enhancement of People's Wellbeing
As an important support for advancing Chinese-path modernization, the improvement of national governance efficacy must take the substantive improvement of people's wellbeing as its core testing benchmark. As the key link in the transformation of institutional advantages into practical results, the value orientation of governance efficacy is highly consistent with the logic of enhancing people's wellbeing. From a theoretical dimension, governance efficacy is not an abstract concept; its fundamental evaluation criteria are always formulated around the people's sense of gain, happiness, and security. Governance practice divorced from the improvement of people's wellbeing loses its value anchor. From a practical dimension, every institutional innovation and process optimization in governance modernization must ultimately be verified through actual results in livelihood areas such as employment security, educational fairness, and the upgrading of medical services. On the New Journey, we must always persist...
“The people’s aspiration for a better life is the goal we strive for.” Taking the improvement of the people's well-being as both the starting point and the ultimate goal for enhancing governance effectiveness is an inevitable choice that deeply integrates governance theory with the practice of people's livelihoods; it manifests the foundational value orientation [18] of the governance system with Chinese characteristics. Specifically, by constructing an integrated governance framework consisting of demand orientation, institutional supply, and effectiveness transformation, the improvement of the people's well-being is systematically transformed into an objective yardstick for testing governance results.
At the level of demand orientation, a dynamic identification mechanism for livelihood demands [19] must be established. By utilizing big data technology to integrate multi-source livelihood data, a map of livelihood needs covering fields such as education, healthcare, elderly care, and housing can be constructed, employing social policy simulation systems to classify and prioritize these needs. Building upon this, a cross-departmental collaborative response platform for livelihood issues should be established to realize a transformation from passive response to proactive governance. This governance model, based on precision identification, can effectively resolve the problem of supply-demand mismatch existing in traditional livelihood policies.
At the level of institutional supply, the focus should be on advancing structural reforms of the livelihood security system. This involves constructing a multi-tiered social security system, accelerating the process of national pooling [20] for basic pension insurance, and advancing reforms in medical insurance payment methods; improving mechanisms for the equalization of public services, establishing a system for the dynamic adjustment of the basic public service catalog, and innovating models for government procurement of services; and deepening the reform of the income distribution system, improving mechanisms for rational wage growth, and exploring distribution policies oriented toward the value of knowledge.
At the level of effectiveness transformation, an evaluation network involving multiple subjects—including the government, the market, and society—should be constructed. This involves introducing third-party evaluation mechanisms and establishing big data monitoring platforms to achieve dynamic tracking and precision optimization of governance results. This testing mechanism, which centers on the people's well-being as the core metric of effectiveness, requires the governance system to possess the capacity for rapid response to livelihood demands, the capacity for dynamic optimization of institutional innovation, and the capacity for precise execution in effectiveness transformation. By reifying abstract governance effectiveness into quantifiable and perceptible livelihood indicators, the system reconstructs the value coordinate system of modern governance and strengthens the practical orientation of governance activities.