Zhang Xiaoshuang: A Review of Recent Theoretical Hotspots on Common Prosperity Abroad
In August 2021, General Secretary Xi Jinping delivered an important speech at the tenth meeting of the Central Committee for Financial and Economic Affairs, asserting: "Common prosperity is an essential requirement of socialism and an important feature of Chinese-path modernization." In October, Qiushi published this speech under the title "Solidly Promoting Common Prosperity." In the address, General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized that "we have now reached the historical stage of solidly promoting common prosperity" and specified the principles that must be grasped to facilitate this process.
As keen overseas observers have noted, along with the increase in China's economic volume and political influence, its major political and economic decisions have simultaneously become global issues—"when China sneezes, the world catches a cold." The important discourses of Chinese leaders regarding common prosperity quickly elicited a widespread response worldwide. Over the past few months, common prosperity has frequently appeared in the headlines of global news media and has repeatedly become a theme for discussion in overseas research institutions: What kind of concept is common prosperity? What connotations have been assigned to it? How will China adjust its wealth distribution mechanisms under this framework? How will this change China, and what kind of impact will it have on a global scale? This article tracks recent discussions surrounding the issue of common prosperity in the English-speaking world and finds the following key points worthy of attention: first, researchers are considering common prosperity—a term with historical connotations—as a new Chinese concept; second, the dissenting opinions raised by neoliberals further reveal their cognitive biases toward China; third, the realization of common prosperity is viewed as an important response by China to the problem of worsening global inequality, which the world’s left-wing forces consider progress in the practice of the socialist movement.
I. Discussion on the Concept of "Common Prosperity"
Marx wrote in the Economic Manuscripts of 1857–1858 (Grundrisse) that in the future socialist system, "the development of social productive forces will be so rapid... that production will be aimed at the prosperity of all." Deng Xiaoping proposed in his 1992 Southern Tour [1] talks: "The essence of socialism is to liberate and develop the productive forces, eliminate exploitation, eradicate polarization, and ultimately reach common prosperity." Common prosperity is the conception of a socialist society held by the classical Marxist authors, a scientific expression of the traditional Chinese idea of Datong [2] (Great Unity), and a major topic of discussion in Chinese theoretical circles. However, in-depth exploration of this by overseas academia has long been lacking. Recently, as common prosperity has received increasing emphasis in China, overseas scholars have paid it great attention, launching multi-dimensional discussions on the concept’s historical connotations, contemporary significance, and potential pathways.
(1) Historical Connotations
Recently, "common prosperity" has entered the field of vision of the international academic community as a Chinese expression; overseas scholars have largely examined the generation and development of this concept within the context of China’s developmental history. For example, David Bandurski, a researcher at the China Media Project at the University of Hong Kong, used official Chinese documents to trace the timeline of China’s proposal of common prosperity, thereby analyzing the evolution of the concept in the history of the Communist Party of China’s discourse: the term "common prosperity" first appeared in the People's Daily on September 25, 1953, as a slogan commemorating the fourth anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. Subsequently, on December 12, the People's Daily published an article titled "The Socialist Road is the Road to Common Prosperity," arguing that capitalism is a "road for the few to get rich" that leaves the vast majority destitute, and that only the socialist road can achieve common prosperity. Four days later, the CPC Central Committee passed the "Resolution on Developing Agricultural Producers' Cooperatives," formally proposing the concept of common prosperity. In Bandurski’s view, the concept of common prosperity as articulated in China in the 1950s was redefined in the late 1970s. He points out that after the Third Plenary Session of the 11th CPC Central Committee [3], high-frequency keywords in official Chinese media reports were more often approximations of the phrase "letting some people get rich first," rather than collective property rights systems. Bandurski further argues that Deng Xiaoping interpreted common prosperity as "those who get rich first driving those who come later," which stimulated the vitality of Chinese society, led China into an era of unprecedented growth, and created massive wealth in most regions. Currently, the questions of "whether the concept of common prosperity will be redefined" and "to what extent the expression 'getting rich first' will be adjusted" remain topics that easily attract the attention of overseas scholars.
In contrast, Bert Hofman, director of the East Asian Institute at the National University of Singapore, offers an interpretation from a different perspective. Hofman believes that a review of official Chinese documents and the texts of Chinese leaders' speeches over the years reveals that "common prosperity did not appear out of thin air," but is rather a reform plan formulated since the Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee to solve the "ever-increasing problem of income inequality" in Chinese society. In the article "China’s Road to Common Prosperity," Hofman points out that the "Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Several Major Issues Concerning Comprehensively Deepening Reform," adopted at the Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee in 2013, proposed: "Improve the income redistribution regulatory mechanism with taxation, social security, and transfer payments as the main means; strengthen the regulatory role of taxation... regulate excessively high incomes, redefine and clear up hidden incomes, ban illegal incomes, increase the income of low-income groups, and increase the proportion of the middle-income group in society as a whole." This policy is consistent with the policy orientation at the beginning of reform and opening up. In 1986, when Deng Xiaoping implemented the coastal development strategy, he pointed out: "Our policy is to let some people and some regions get rich first, so as to drive and help backward regions; it is an obligation for advanced regions to help backward regions." Perhaps most people have forgotten the latter half of this statement, but the Communist Party of China will not forget its original aspiration and founding mission.
(2) Contemporary Significance
At present, Bandurski's brief historical survey of the concept of common prosperity has become the background for many overseas researchers to further their discussions, causing common prosperity—a classic concept—to be considered more as a new, open-ended Chinese manifesto. Ryan Hass, a fellow at the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution, points out in his analysis report that common prosperity is a historical concept of the CPC that has also been endowed with contemporary connotations. In terms of contemporary significance, the phrase "gradually realizing the socialist transformation of the entire agricultural sector... to enable the entire rural population to achieve common prosperity" began China's path toward agricultural collectivization; "some regions and some people can get rich first, driving and helping other regions and other people to gradually reach common prosperity" brought the vitality of reform and opening up; "common prosperity is the common prosperity of all people... not the prosperity of a few, nor is it uniform egalitarianism" reflects the policy objectives of China entering a new stage of development.
It is in this sense that common prosperity, as China's policy agenda, has increasingly become a key topic of focus for international research institutions. In a roundtable convened by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Joyce Chang (Chair of Global Research at JPMorgan Chase), John L. Holden (Managing Director at McLarty Associates), and Scott Rozelle (Senior Fellow at Stanford’s Freeman Spogli Institute), among others, explored the reasons for China’s "solidly promoting common prosperity" and its possible impacts. The questions they focused on included: What are the main driving forces for China moving in this direction? Can "common prosperity" reduce inequality and lay the foundation for long-term inclusive growth? Several expert briefings from Oxford Analytica have taken common prosperity as their theme; these reports suggest that "solving China's inequality problem will be a slow and complex process." While specific measures of the common prosperity policy are not yet fully known, the Sixth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee and the 20th National Congress will undoubtedly be more firmly committed to solving the problem of inequality. In the eyes of overseas researchers, China has become an economic power by following the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics, but this process has also led to social imbalances and income inequality, bringing many new challenges. "Aside from poverty reduction, few national leaders have explicitly made income distribution a national goal," but China has made a responsible choice. The purpose of Chinese leaders revisiting common prosperity is to make Chinese society fairer. "China's achievements in drastically reducing poverty over the past few decades are glorious. In the next stage of economic development, China's increased focus on common prosperity is admirable."
Taken together, overseas researchers analyze that the common prosperity proposed by Chinese leaders today aims to answer at least three contemporary propositions: First, disciplining the "disorderly expansion and speculation of capital": "The Communist Party of China is increasingly wary of unregulated market mechanisms," especially the "excessively high real estate prices," "rising education costs," "unfair industrial monopolies," and even "suspected infringements on national security" brought about by entrepreneurs' one-sided pursuit of profit. Second, "making the olive fuller" [4]: responding to the public’s general anxiety about inequality, alleviating the problem of unbalanced development, regulating the trend of wealth polarization, and expanding the size of the middle-income group to meet the people's growing needs for a better life. Third, emphasizing Party leadership in the reform process: Common prosperity is "another ideology for the Communist Party of China to respond to new contradictions and challenges in the international and domestic environment and consolidate its foundation of governance." A basic consensus is: "China's reforms have created high growth, high employment, and high income, enabling hundreds of millions of Chinese people to successfully lift themselves out of poverty. This is a remarkable achievement of global significance. However, increasing income inequality has been controversial and has become an urgent problem to be solved. With the realization of a 'moderately prosperous society' (xiaokang shehui), China’s overall goals are changing." Hofman cites Xi Jinping's speech at a January 2021 seminar for provincial and ministerial-level officials on implementing the spirit of the Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee to explore the new goals after this shift: "Achieving common prosperity is not only an economic issue, but also a major political issue concerning the Party's foundation of governance... We must never allow the gap between rich and poor to keep widening, the poor to get poorer and the rich to get richer; we must never allow an unbridgeable chasm to appear between the rich and the poor." Ryan Hass stated that as China's economy moves from high-speed growth to stable development, the Chinese leadership is shifting its focus to improving the quality of life of the people, using it as a breakthrough point for achieving the modernization of governance capabilities.
(3) Possible Pathways
Common prosperity has triggered attention worldwide. Although overseas researchers have gradually clarified its historical connotations and contemporary significance, they have yet to reach a consensus on the possible pathways to achieving this goal. In the eyes of these observers, various signs indicate that China is looking for ways to restructure the relationship among the Party, society, and the market, but does not want such adjustments to undermine the vitality of high-quality growth. How can the income gap be regulated and economic dividends shared during high-quality development so as to achieve common prosperity? The answer to this question needs to be sought in further courses of action rather than in theoretical prerequisites.
In the English-speaking world, a number of researchers have linked the concept of common prosperity with China’s recent domestic regulatory policies. For instance, Yogesh Gupta, former Indian Ambassador to Denmark, wrote that the new concept of "common prosperity" implies that income distribution across all strata of Chinese society must become more equal, thereby triggering a major shift in the national development model. Over the past few months, the Communist Party of China has been "guiding and supervising Chinese enterprises with clear rules, effective laws, and greater policy transparency" in an attempt to narrow the income gap and pivot toward high-quality development. Kevin Yao, a senior correspondent for Reuters, analyzed in his article "Explainer: The Motivations and Importance of China’s 'Common Prosperity' Push" that China is "promising to use taxes and other income redistribution levers to expand the proportion of the middle-income population and increase the income of the poor," while "encouraging high-income enterprises and individuals to contribute more to society through 'tertiary distribution' [5]—namely, charity and donations." Meanwhile, "long-discussed reforms, such as the implementation of property and inheritance taxes to address the wealth gap, have also gained new momentum." Beyond this, policies promoting the realization of common prosperity include "curbing tax evasion, shortening the working hours of high-tech enterprise employees, banning for-profit academic tutoring, and restricting the time minors spend playing video games." Many researchers believe that most of the regulatory policies adopted by the Chinese government over the past year fall within the conceptual scope of common prosperity.
Other researchers have combined existing research findings to analyze possible paths for achieving common prosperity. Bert Hofman mentioned that if a government attempts to correct certain inequalities, it generally has two options: the first is to undergo a higher degree of redistribution of market outcomes. This is the route taken by European countries. The Gini coefficient of market income (primary distribution) in these countries is more or less higher than in China, while the Gini coefficient after redistribution is lower than in China; however, their growth rates are much lower than China's, so this European model often brings with it a "welfare trap." If China considers redistribution through taxes and transfer payments, it must consider whether this will affect incentives for workers and entrepreneurs, as these are the drivers of China’s growth in the coming decades. The second option is to use policy tools to ensure that market outcomes themselves become more equal. This is milder compared to the European model but can still regulate inequality of outcomes; it is essentially the approach chosen by South Korea, China’s Taiwan region, and Japan in recent years. For China, in addition to stricter market regulation of monopolies, it could achieve more equal market outcomes through policies such as investing in education, reforming the hukou (household registration) [6] system, and increasing farmers' land rights. Hofman believes that regardless of China’s policy direction, it is important that its path of action be supported by scientific analysis.
Nicolas Berggruen and Nathan Gardels of the Berggruen Institute in the United States argue that China should promote common prosperity within the framework of the socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics. They wrote: "To achieve the goals of common prosperity and 'basically realizing socialist modernization by 2035,' China has initiated 'tertiary distribution'; in this process, 'pre-distribution' using 'universal basic capital' as a means should be a concept worth considering." They state that pre-distribution targets mechanisms in all market-oriented economies that lead to inequality—namely, that the share of national income going to capital asset holders is increasingly higher than that of people who rely solely on labor income for their livelihoods. China does not need to follow the traditional model of the Western welfare state—which, after wealth is created, levies heavy taxes on the so-called "excessive" income of the most successful entrepreneurs and then redistributes the tax revenue to low-income groups. Instead, it can start from the source by requiring all startups to transfer 30% of their shares to a "Common Prosperity Fund," allowing all families to gain from the wealth creation process. These two researchers believe that compared with Western capitalist countries, China, by adhering to the socialist market economy system, has greater policy space to practice this new path. The "tertiary distribution" policy will enable the entire Chinese people to make solid strides toward the goal of common prosperity, and "universal basic capital" may well be a new path toward that end.
II. Common Prosperity in the Neoliberal Horizon
Overseas researchers have given unprecedented attention to China’s proposed common prosperity agenda, conducting prudent discussions on its theory and practice. However, as Martin Jacques, a Senior Fellow at the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Cambridge, noted, Western neoliberals remain somewhat bewildered by China’s approach—"they are not yet sure what to make of it," and "many views are based on an instinctive opposition, considering it ‘negative’ out of ideology." Analyzing the current interpretations of common prosperity by overseas researchers helps us understand the cognitive biases held by the Western world toward China under neoliberal conceptions.
(1) Opposition based on "positioning first"
George Soros, the Wall Street financier and Chairman of the Open Society Foundations, was among the first to express an instinctive opposition to "common prosperity." In September 2021, Soros wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal calling on American investment institutions such as BlackRock to stop investing in the Chinese market. His reasoning was: "China’s recently proposed 'common prosperity' plan aims to reduce inequality by distributing the wealth of the rich to the general public, which does not bode well for foreign investors." Soros argued that the United States and China are now embroiled in a fundamental confrontation between two systems of governance, and investing in the Chinese market "endangers the national security interests of the United States and other democratic nations."
Reflecting on recent overseas discussions regarding common prosperity, we find that the neoliberal narrative still exerts a significant influence on the mainstream Western intellectual field. Rational analysis of China remains scarce, while irrational rhetoric is quite common. For example, some "Soros-style" market fundamentalists claim: "China’s attempt to control the market is unprecedented" and "China is trying to restructure Chinese society by redistributing wealth more evenly among 1.4 billion people." There are also concerns about dirigisme: "China is undergoing a policy shift toward strengthening state control over the economy and society," and "the common prosperity goal may accelerate the rebalancing of China’s economy toward consumption-driven growth to reduce dependence on exports and investment, but the policy may harm growth driven by the private sector." Obviously, these views are serious misunderstandings of China’s relevant policies.
Positions and methods profoundly influence the worldviews of overseas researchers. As Sergio Rodriguez Gelfenstein, a former Venezuelan national security advisor and left-wing scholar, stated in his article "Toward Common Prosperity": "Western analysts were quick to react to these measures, expressing concern about the impact they might have on capital owners, even as they acknowledged that achieving a fairer distribution of wealth would benefit more families." In fact, "these views expose their inability to understand China’s economic model, falling once again into the myth of considering its effectiveness solely within the Western individual-market mindset."
(2) Criticism of the "clever-clever" variety
Theoretically, the spontaneous order defended by neoliberals is constructed as the ideal model for the sound development of economy and society. In practice, however, within an unequal social structure, liberalization and marketization often "rob the poor to give to the rich." On one hand, "an unregulated free market naturally favors the wealthy and the lucky"; neoliberalism is essentially "an exponentially expanding financial dynamic that seeks to concentrate the world's most profitable and rent-yielding resources in the hands of financial managers, who are the agents of oligarchs in the United States and its overseas economies." Neoliberalism points toward a path of prosperity for the few, where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. On the other hand, in the observable timeline since 2008, financial crises, debt crises, and post-pandemic crises have followed one after another. Maintaining high-quality and more equitable development—promoting "common prosperity for all people" and "prosperity in both the material and spiritual lives of the masses"—has also become a deep-seated need for Western society after forty years of neoliberal dominance. Yet, adherents of neoliberalism selectively ignore these two points; thus, their fierce attacks on the so-called "socialist utopia," the "interventionist state," and "political movements that kill the rich to help the poor" are more of a "clever-clever" [7] piece of performance art.
In fact, the neoliberals' opposition to "common prosperity" first faces opposition to themselves. British scholar John Ross pointed out, "Clearly, Soros believes that wealth should be concentrated in the hands of the rich," which is repulsive from the perspective of social welfare, inefficient economically, and will inevitably trigger social unrest—as evidenced by recent instability in the United States. Michael Hudson, a professor of economics at the University of Missouri, stated that China follows socialist policies and hopes to keep its economic surplus at home to benefit its own citizens rather than American financial investors; people like Soros are merely angry that China has not followed the neoliberal policies that the United States is following. After all, for them, this is a "clash of civilizations." He believes that neoliberalism has always described all public actions aimed at ensuring common prosperity as interventions in property rights, while its "mass media, academia, think tank lobbying agencies, policy foundations, and NGOs use a set of neoliberal rhetoric to create excuses for capital flight, money laundering, tax evasion, deregulation, and privatization."
Some studies have pointed out that "positioning first" opposition and "clever-clever" criticism reflect their cognitive bias: "Stuffing every development agenda of today’s China into the black box of the 'natural behavior of an authoritarian state' is the daily pastime of political commentators and pundits of all stripes around the world. This sophistry is passed off as scholarly analysis, but in reality, it does little to help understand what is happening in China and why." So, what are the facts? Some researchers believe the fact is that the modern world, reshaped by neoliberals since the 1980s, has produced a gap between rich and poor that is worsening and verging on spinning out of control. "Today, China is working hard to correct its own shortcomings and is responding to the neoliberal wave that has come crashing in with the wave of globalization. China has begun to emphasize common prosperity, tertiary distribution, rural revitalization, and the eradication of poverty for all, solving problems at their root to avoid being submerged by market forces. But the United States remains addicted to the dominance of neoliberal ideas, letting the power of capital override political power. In the name of market freedom, 99% of America’s wealth is possessed by approximately 1% of the people, entering the period of the most serious disparity between rich and poor in history."
III. Common Prosperity as a Chinese Solution
In "The Order of Discourse," Michel Foucault says that history constantly teaches us that discourse is a power that must be controlled. Examining the global resonance of "common prosperity" as a Chinese concept and the prism effect it triggers across different ideological spectra, we should perhaps rethink the classic proposition that "discourse is power." On one hand, neoliberals strongly oppose common prosperity within their narrative framework; on the other hand, common prosperity is seen as a major action taken by "China in its struggle with the West for global narrative discourse power." In reality, the power of discourse is not equivalent to the domination of discourse. In serious academic discussion, the realization of common prosperity is increasingly viewed by overseas researchers as a "Chinese solution" provided by China with a responsible attitude to solve the problem of inequality.
(1) Global inequality
Many overseas researchers believe that widening income inequality has become the "defining challenge of our time." As French economist Gabriel Zucman has pointed out, the wealth share of the top 1% in wealth analysis has increased from 28% in 1980 to 33% today, while the share of the bottom 75% hovers around 10%. Because financial globalization has made it increasingly difficult to measure wealth at the very top, current research may underestimate the extent to which inequality has intensified. In fact, the economic shocks and policy adjustments brought about by the pandemic have further exacerbated the global polarization between rich and poor; the gap in developed economies has reached its highest level in decades, and the state of inequality in emerging markets and developing countries has become even more labyrinthine. Meanwhile, the "trickle-down effect" [8] envisioned by neoliberalism has completely failed.
In the view of some overseas researchers, inequality and collapsing capitalism mean that the idea of embracing socialism is gaining momentum, and "common prosperity" is precisely the call of the times. As the French scholar Thomas Piketty proposed in his book Capital and Ideology, "inequality is not the result of economic or technological change, but is rooted in politics and ideology." American scholar Stephanie Kelton argues that as the philosophical catalyst for opposing "big government" and promoting deregulation, neoliberalism brought a period of deregulation to the world that caused private debt to soar, social safety nets to be destroyed, and governments to attack workers and unions. "The state, which should have existed as the protector of the social masses, moved toward non-interventionist individualism. Governance was considered not the responsibility of the state but of the individual, and government became an institution that damaged economic efficiency." "This is a structural problem; the neoliberal variant of capitalism is no longer in anyone’s long-term interest, including that of the capitalists themselves."
Kelton states: "The vision for human society was intended to be broad, common prosperity; the economy should serve everyone, not just the few at the tip of the pyramid." She argues that the goal of policymakers should be to demonstrate a balanced economy that achieves prosperity and flourishing shared universally by the people, rather than pursuing superficially balanced budgets while allowing income and wealth to flow to the very top.
(II) China’s New Solution
As stated above, since the 1980s, the prevalence of neoliberalism has caused the problem of wealth inequality to spread continuously. As Martin Jacques [9] has noted, despite strong domestic outcries in the United States, the U.S. government has taken no action to eliminate severe inequality, and neither has Europe. Today, as China actively promotes the realization of common prosperity, Western countries clearly lack the same sense of responsibility. Consequently, the Chinese concept of common prosperity is viewed by overseas left-wing forces as a responsible Chinese solution.
First, while exploring the concept of common prosperity, left-wing scholars are also deconstructing the "American narrative" from a comparative perspective. For instance, in Michael Hudson’s [10] discourse, "'free trade' is the use of force to maintain and expand the U.S.-centered 'free market'"; "'democracy' has become a label for pro-U.S. regimes," the essence of which is nothing more than "a hierarchy that guarantees 'property rights' through the 'rule of law'—since the claims of creditors sit at the top of the legal pyramid, democratic nations often end up evolving into oligarchies." Meanwhile, "using state power to regulate monopolies or tax rentier income," and "protecting the interests of one's own people by resisting U.S. financial takeovers of their natural resources, infrastructure, and most profitable monopolies, is met with condemnation." By analyzing economic history, Hudson points out that Western civilization is built upon a system of the rule of law and property rights formed during the period of the Roman oligarchy; to avoid failure, polarized Western economies have always had to rely on new plunder and new conquest to alleviate pressure. China, however, "insists on regulating the economy—guiding it to promote overall prosperity rather than seeking interests for foreign investors or oligarchic groups." In the past 20 years, "it is the development of socialist China that has driven the development of the world economy and maintained Western prosperity," yet China is now condemned as a threat simply because it seeks to follow a socialist path rather than supporting neoliberal rentiers.
Second, in the eyes of overseas researchers, common prosperity—regarded as a key characteristic of Chinese-path modernization—is both contemporary and historical; it is a policy shift by China to face complex real-world problems directly, and a new stage in developing socialism. It may contribute a viable model to the world or become an alternative to the failure of neoliberal economics. Common prosperity is contemporary, as pointed out by Yuen Yuen Ang, a professor of political science at the University of Michigan: "In China, the definition of development is changing." "In past decades, the model was straightforward: placing the growth rate above all other matters," but now Chinese leaders want to "end the 'Gilded Age' [11] and move toward a Chinese version of the Progressive Era, achieving fairer and less corrupt growth." Even in the eyes of neoliberals, China's "goal is to solve institutional problems, such as excessive debt and inequality, and achieve more balanced growth." Common prosperity is also historical; looking back at the history of the People's Republic of China since 1949, one can see that China's exploration of establishing a socialist system in pursuit of modernization has undergone a complex process. Regarding modern China, "Mao Zedong set the tone for socialism with Chinese 'characteristics,'" and in the 1970s, when advanced technology was still held by the West and other capitalist countries, "Deng Xiaoping adjusted policies according to the actual situation, introducing productive forces to solve the problems of poverty and development." Today, Xi Jinping will be committed to "resolving the problems that have emerged within the socialist market economy" and promoting socialism "toward more balanced and harmonious development"—that is, "taking the path of common prosperity."
In the scrutiny of left-wing researchers, common prosperity carries the original aspiration and founding mission of the Communist Party of China's governance and is increasingly becoming a viable new development solution for the world. Bikrum Gill, an assistant professor of political science at Virginia Tech, believes that from 1949 to the present, China has overthrown the rules of imperialism, achieved largely through land reform based on the collective ownership of rural land. Since the beginning of reform and opening up, although the CPC introduced the market, it did not abandon the aforementioned path; on the contrary, the process of transitioning to the market after 1979 was always constructed upon this foundation. The CPC has never changed its socialist convictions: "Common prosperity will be an important part of Chinese state and social governance; China is promising to build a fairer society, a larger and wealthier middle class, and enterprises that bring rewards rather than just extraction."