Zhang Yi: Further Comprehensively Deepening Reform Must Adhere to a People-Centered Approach
The "Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Further Comprehensively Deepening Reform and Advancing Chinese-path Modernization" (hereinafter referred to as the "Decision"), deliberated and adopted at the Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee, serves as a general mobilization and strategic deployment for advancing comprehensively deepening reform toward greater breadth and depth on the new journey of the New Era. The "Decision" clarifies major principles for further comprehensively deepening reform, one of which is "upholding a people-centered approach." Reform and opening up is the cause of the hundreds of millions of people themselves. General Secretary Xi Jinping has pointed out: "Reform and development must persist in being people-centered, taking the people's aspiration for a better life as our goal, and relying on the people to create historical achievements!" To deeply study and grasp the essence of General Secretary Xi Jinping's important speeches, and to properly study and implement the spirit of the Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee, we must firmly grasp this major principle of upholding a people-centered approach. We must respect the people's principal position and their pioneering spirit [1], ensuring that reform responds to the people's calls, and achieving a state where reform is for the people, relies on the people, and its fruits are shared by the people.
Ensuring Reform is For the People
Character by and for the people is the essential attribute of Marxism. Marx and Engels pointed out in the Communist Manifesto: "All previous movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority." Consistently standing with the people and struggling for the interests of the people is the fundamental distinction between a Marxist party and other political parties. Seeking happiness for the Chinese people and rejuvenation for the Chinese nation is the original aspiration and founding mission of Chinese Communists, as well as the original aspiration and founding mission of reform and opening up.
General Secretary Xi Jinping has noted: "Reform has meaning only if it is for the people." Our Party's focus on reform and promotion of development is, in the final analysis, to allow the people to live better lives. Since the 18th CPC National Congress, the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core has deeply implemented the people-centered development philosophy. It has advanced reforms by addressing the most immediate, direct, and practical interest issues concerning the people, exerting continuous effort to ensure that children have access to childcare, students have access to education, workers have access to earnings, the sick have access to medical care, the elderly have access to aged care, residents have access to housing, and the vulnerable have access to support [2]. For example, the Party has vigorously promoted the reform of the household registration system (hukou), facilitating the orderly urbanization of permanent residents capable of stable employment and living in towns and cities, while steadily advancing full coverage of basic urban public services for all permanent residents. We have built the world’s largest education, social security, and healthcare systems, achieving a historic leap in the level of universal education. In 2023, basic old-age insurance covered 1.066 billion people, and the participation rate in basic medical insurance remained stable at over 95%... This series of reform measures has made the people's sense of gain, happiness, and security more substantial, better guaranteed, and more sustainable.
The times are evolving, and the needs of the masses are constantly changing. Facing the new expectations of the people, we must continue to push reform forward, which inevitably requires ensuring that reform is for the people. General Secretary Xi Jinping has stated: "If reform cannot bring tangible benefits to the common people, if it cannot create a fairer social environment, or if it even leads to more inequality, then reform loses its meaning and cannot be sustained." To further comprehensively deepen reform, we must firmly maintain our value orientation. The "Decision" highlighted several key points during its drafting process, one of which was "upholding the principle of people first, planning and advancing reform based on the overall, fundamental, and long-term interests of the people." Only by putting the people first, planning reform ideas and formulating reform measures based on the people's interests, and properly handling major issues involving reform, can we continuously realize the people's aspiration for a better life. Only then does reform have meaning.
To ensure reform is for the people, we must deeply understand the needs of the masses, solve the practical problems they face, and improve their standard of living. To this end, we must conduct in-depth research and investigation [3], listen broadly to opinions from all sides, and understand the people's needs in employment, education, medical care, childcare, housing, and elderly care. We must focus on identifying the pressure points and breakthroughs for reform from the "urgent, difficult, anxious, and hesitant" [4] problems of the common people. We should introduce more reform measures that meet the urgent needs of the people and reflect their desires, and do more practical deeds that benefit, warm, and satisfy the people. Simultaneously, we should use the promotion of economic and social development and the provision of a tangible sense of gain to the people as the evaluation criteria for the effectiveness of reform, continuously improving and perfecting various policies and measures.
Ensuring Reform Relies on the People
General Secretary Xi Jinping has pointed out: "Reform has momentum only if it relies on the people." The people are the creators of history and the fundamental force that determines the future and destiny of the Party and the country. For over 40 years, every breakthrough and deepening in the understanding and practice of reform and opening up, the emergence and development of every new thing, and the creation and accumulation of experience in every field and link of reform have all come from the wisdom and practice of the hundreds of millions of people. History and practice have fully proven that without the support and participation of the people, no reform can succeed. No matter what difficulties or challenges we encounter, as long as there is support and participation from the people, there are no difficulties in reform that cannot be overcome and no hurdles that cannot be crossed.
In the New Era, a primary reason why comprehensively deepening reform has achieved historic greatness is that we have listened extensively to the opinions and suggestions of the masses, timely summarized the fresh experiences created by the masses, and fully mobilized their enthusiasm, initiative, and creativity in advancing reform. For instance, to properly draft the proposals for the 14th Five-Year Plan, General Secretary Xi Jinping chaired seven symposiums, emphasizing: "We must look to the long term, grasp the general trend, open the door to suggestions, and pool collective wisdom, combining the strengthening of top-level design with the persistence of 'asking the people for their ideas' [5]." Similarly, before this Plenary Session, the document drafting group solicited opinions widely, conducted special demonstrations, carried out investigations and research, and repeatedly discussed and revised the text. These are all vivid practices of listening extensively to the masses' opinions and fully absorbing their wisdom into the design of reform. In the process of comprehensively deepening reform, it is precisely because we have always adhered to a people-centered approach, respected the people's principal position, and relied closely on the people to drive reform that we have written a new chapter of the "Two Miracles" [6] through our arduous struggles.
As reform progresses, there are more "hard bones" to gnaw [7]; the contradictions in advancing reform are numerous and the difficulty is great, but not reforming is not an option. At the same time, the masses still have many worries and troubles, and there are still many areas in our work concerning people's livelihoods that are not entirely satisfactory. The heavier the tasks of reform, the more we must rely on the support and participation of the masses, being adept at leading the people forward by proposing and implementing correct reform measures, and adept at refining reform policies based on the people's practical creations and developmental requirements. Before the Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee, General Secretary Xi Jinping chaired a symposium for entrepreneurs and experts to focus on reform and solicit suggestions, stating that "relevant departments should carefully study and absorb the opinions and suggestions put forward by everyone on further comprehensively deepening reform." Infinite wisdom and power are hidden among the masses. In the process of further comprehensively deepening reform, when encountering interest issues that are complex and difficult to weigh, or deep-seated problems that are extremely thorny to solve, we must persist in asking the people for ideas and asking the people what they need. We must strengthen research on major reform issues, listen as much as possible to the voices from the grassroots and the frontline during reform design, and fully absorb social demands, public wisdom, and grassroots experience, relying on the power of the people to find the ideas and momentum to solve problems.
To ensure reform relies on the people, we must focus on developing whole-process people's democracy, upholding the organic unity of Party leadership, the people being masters of the country, and the rule of law. We must promote the further improvement of the system where the people are masters of the country, and develop consultative democracy in a broad, multilevel, and institutionalized manner. We must perfect the institutional system of whole-process people's democracy, expand democratic channels, and enrich democratic forms at all levels, so that the status of the people as masters of the country is specifically and realistically reflected in all aspects of national political and social life, concentrating the wisdom and strength of the broadest masses onto the cause of reform.
Ensuring Reform Fruits are Shared by the People
As Chinese-path modernization continues to advance and expand, the people's aspiration for a better life has grown even stronger. General Secretary Xi Jinping has noted: "The fundamental purpose of our Party in advancing comprehensively deepening reform is to promote social fairness and justice, and to let the fruits of reform and development benefit all people more extensively and equitably." Starting from the overall, fundamental, and long-term interests of the people, and introducing more innovative reform measures to solve problems one by one—such as employment, education, medical care, social security, housing, elderly care, food safety, the ecological environment, and public order—is the only way to ensure the fruits of reform and development benefit all people more extensively and equitably. The "Decision" proposes that "guaranteeing and improving people's livelihoods in the course of development is a major task of Chinese-path modernization" and makes strategic deployments for "improving the institutional system for guaranteeing and improving people's livelihoods." To implement the reform tasks deployed by the Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee, we must persist in doing our utmost while acting within our means, continuously satisfying the people's aspiration for a better life.
Persisting in "doing our utmost" means taking the promotion of social fairness and justice and the enhancement of people's wellbeing as the starting point and goal. The "Decision" proposed a series of major reform measures regarding perfecting the income distribution system, improving the employment-first policy, refining the social security system, deepening the reform of the medical and health system, and perfecting the support and service system for population development. The effective implementation of these measures will undoubtedly continue to benefit the people. To implement the spirit of the Third Plenary Session of the 20th CPC Central Committee, we must perfect the income distribution system and regulate the order of income distribution; optimize the policy environment for promoting employment through entrepreneurship, and support the standardized development of new forms of employment; improve the social security system for flexible employees, migrant workers, and those in new forms of employment, and completely lift household registration restrictions for participating in social insurance at the place of employment; increase the construction and supply of government-subsidized housing to meet the essential housing needs of the wage-earning group; deepen the reform of the medical and health system and implement a health-priority development strategy; and improve the support and service system for population development, perfecting the birth support policy system and incentive mechanisms, perfecting policies for the development of elderly care services and the silver economy, and steadily and orderly promoting the reform of gradually delaying the statutory retirement age based on the principles of voluntarism and flexibility; and so forth. We must persist in "aiming for the great and far-reaching while attending to the minute and subtle" [8], ensuring that all reform work is solid and in place.
Persisting in "acting within our means" entails guaranteeing and improving people's livelihoods during the process of development. General Secretary Xi Jinping has pointed out: "We must coordinate needs and possibilities, basing the guarantee and improvement of people's livelihoods on the foundation of economic development and financial sustainability. We must not aim too high, raise expectations too far, or make promises that cannot be fulfilled." Acting within our means emphasizes that we must proceed from reality and fully consider the realistic conditions of our specific stage of development. We must correctly understand and handle the relationship between development and the guarantee and improvement of people's livelihoods; we should drive development through the improvement of livelihoods, while determining the degree of that improvement based on the level of development. To this end, we must strengthen a problem-oriented approach, starting from things that can be achieved under realistic conditions. We must keep a close eye on the "annoying, worrying, and distressing" matters that the common people feel strongly about in terms of social security, and concentrate efforts on strengthening public-interest, foundational, and "bottom-line" [9] livelihood construction. With the "spirit of driving a nail" [10], we should handle one matter after another, work year after year, and persevere in advancing the sustainable development of the cause of livelihood protection.
(The author is the Director of the Institute of Chinese-path Modernization, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)