[UK] Martin Jacques: China's Common Prosperity Continues to Make Remarkable Progress
Since the 18th CPC National Congress, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has placed the realization of common prosperity in a more prominent position, continuously refining the overall concept of common prosperity. It has not only advocated for "promoting common prosperity through high-quality development" at the material level, but has also provided a comprehensive explanation of the rich connotations of common prosperity from the perspectives of political, ecological, and spiritual civilization.
Achieving common prosperity requires high-quality development. The world stands at the frontier of a new industrial revolution (autonomous vehicles, 3D printing, robotics, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, quantum computing, nanotechnology, genomics, and genetic engineering). At this juncture, however, China has been subjected to unreasonable trade restrictions and has even encountered "bottleneck" [1] problems in the import of key products. Facing this challenge, the CPC has adopted an innovation-driven development strategy, emphasizing the development, promotion, and application of high and new technologies across all fields. To support scientific and technological innovation, the CPC attaches great importance to developing national education and vocational training, striving to enhance the human capital and professional skills of the entire society. Simultaneously, the CPC encourages people to achieve prosperity through hard work and innovation, creating a developmental environment in which everyone participates.
While encouraging prosperity through innovation, under the leadership of the CPC, the Chinese government has intensified its crackdown on illegal income and strengthened the regulation and adjustment of unreasonably high incomes. The Chinese government has carried out a series of anti-corruption actions, including the "campaign to combat organized crime" and the "sweeping away black ties and eliminating evil" [2] operations, resolutely curbing power-for-money transactions. In the financial and real estate sectors, the CPC and the Chinese government have taken measures to control "red lines" [3] for debt and related risks, strengthening supervision over real estate and shadow banking. In the platform economy, the Chinese government has strengthened anti-monopoly supervision of platform giants to prevent them from obtaining excess profits by suppressing competitors and squeezing small suppliers. In the cultural sphere, the government has strictly managed the cultural and entertainment industries, cracking down on issues such as tax evasion by celebrities, while striving to ensure that the development of the video game industry does not negatively impact education, science, technology, and other cultural undertakings.
The deepest driver of income distribution is primary distribution. The CPC is focusing on expanding the size of the middle-income group, increasing the share of wages in income distribution, restricting employers from excessively extending working hours, and striving to improve the fairness of competition. Under the leadership of the CPC, the Chinese government has implemented regional development policies for the central, western, and northeastern regions, and coordinated urban-rural development. These measures expand local employment, improve infrastructure, attract investment, and increase the income of local people by building and mobilizing local resources.
The CPC and the Chinese government have also undertaken fiscal and tax reforms to promote more balanced basic public services through secondary distribution. The CPC has established a minimum subsistence allowance system [4] in both rural and urban areas and a "five insurances and one fund" [5] social security system for workers, covering endowment, medical, unemployment, work-related injury, and maternity insurance, as well as the housing provident fund. Regarding the provision of basic public services, public infrastructure and services such as medical and health care, education, elderly care, emergency response, culture and sports, waste management, and transportation have spread across the country.
In recent years, the costs of housing, education, and medical care have grown rapidly, burdening some families. To promote social justice and ensure the people share the fruits of reform and development, the CPC has focused on solving problems in the aforementioned areas to prevent them from being "hijacked by capital." The Chinese government has vigorously promoted the construction of government-subsidized housing, reduced real estate cost risks and related financial market risks, restricted excessively rapid increases in market rents, and addressed the issue of vacant housing. Meanwhile, in terms of education, the government has focused on reducing education costs and implemented the "double reduction" [6] policy to alleviate the burden of education on families.
For a long time, the CPC has consistently emphasized the role of tertiary distribution [7], highlighting the responsibility of those who become wealthy first to help others catch up, and significant results have been achieved in multiple fields and regions. The "pairing assistance" [8] programs and the major cross-regional tax transfers from the central government to local governments in underdeveloped areas are very successful examples.
Furthermore, it is impossible to comprehensively evaluate the contribution of the CPC and the Chinese government to common prosperity without focusing on China's poverty alleviation cause. The targeted poverty alleviation [9] proposed by the Chinese government in 2013 is most notable, enabling nearly 100 million people under the current standard to escape extreme poverty, and all 832 poverty-stricken counties and 128,000 poverty-stricken villages have been removed from the poverty list. This reflects the unwavering political commitment of the CPC and the Chinese government; eliminating poverty is the collective responsibility of government departments at all levels. After lifting people out of poverty, the government turned its attention to addressing the risk that some people might fall back into poverty. Therefore, the CPC continues to advance rural revitalization in depth.
Achieving high-quality development also requires the construction of an ecological civilization system, high-quality green and healthy lifestyles and production methods, and harmony between humanity and nature. Consequently, the CPC is establishing and improving a strict national land management system, committing to integrated urban-rural development, and emphasizing the important role that the countryside plays in economic and cultural development as the carrier of Chinese civilization. From 2014 to 2020, the CPC and the Chinese government promoted a new type of people-centered urbanization. The 19th CPC National Congress proposed the rural revitalization strategy, striving to build vast rural areas into homes where the Chinese people can live and work in peace and enjoy a happy life.
After the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the CPC and the Chinese government protected people's lives and health through the prevention, containment, and management of pandemic risks, adding another dimension to the CPC's common prosperity agenda. In this area, China has achieved great success in protecting the entire population, especially vulnerable groups.
The international division of labor under capitalism has formed a world system in which developed countries extract value from developing countries by virtue of their relatively advanced industrial and military technology and strong financial power. This system has continuously intensified the global gap between rich and poor. China's rise shows that, if governed properly, emerging economies have the capacity to gradually overcome these obstacles and help other countries on the path to common prosperity in the process. In other words, achieving common prosperity is a common need of all countries in the world; countries can gradually achieve common prosperity by choosing appropriate development paths and governance styles. To this end, China actively fulfills its international responsibilities, proposing the Belt and Road Initiative, initiating the establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the BRICS New Development Bank, and playing an active role through multilateral venues such as BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.
In summary, achieving common prosperity and high-quality development is the necessary path for China, under the leadership of the CPC, to achieve the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. These two goals are multidimensional, encompassing material, ecological, cultural, and governance progress. The optimization of income distribution includes encouraging hard work, regulating excessively high incomes, increasing the size of the middle-income group, and raising the income of low-income groups, which helps strengthen the development model of expanding domestic demand. China’s call to build a community with a shared future for humanity is a direct manifestation of the concept of common prosperity on the international stage.