Zhang Ruoyun: The Theoretical Exploration Process of the Communist Party of China's People-Centered Thought
"People's subjectivity" is a conceptual category imbued with a sense of history and holism, containing within itself a rich connotation of the era. For over a century, facing challenges such as the leap in modes of production, rapid adjustment of social structures, risks within the international environment, and the diversification of social ideologies, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has consistently adhered to the "people-centered" development philosophy. In the process of adapting to fleeting and ever-changing practice, its thought on people's subjectivity has reached maturity through a hundred years of accumulation. In October 2022, proceeding from the essential requirements of Chinese-path modernization and taking the comprehensive building of a modern socialist country as the developmental goal, the 20th Party Congress proposed five major principles that must be firmly grasped. Among these, the "people-centered" development thought emphasizes maintaining the fundamental interests of the people, enhancing people’s well-being, and continuously ensuring that development is for the people, relies on the people, and its fruits are shared by the people, so that the achievements of modernization benefit all people more extensively and equitably. Within the CPC's discourse system, the core values of the Party's thought on people's subjectivity have developed and changed historically and through inheritance, forming a core value system at the theoretical level of "each in their proper place" [1], "common prosperity," and "shared development." In practice, it has fulfilled the historical task of integrating various social classes and strata during different historical periods, realizing a functional evolution from mobilization strategy to value leadership. The "people" have become an organic unity of the subjects of material production, political power, and value realization.
I. Political Integration: "Each in Their Proper Place" as a Mobilization Strategy During the Revolutionary Period
Mao Zedong once pointed out: "The concept of 'the people' has different meanings in different countries and in different historical periods in each country." [2] The New Democratic Revolution period [3] was a transitional era for China as it shifted from a traditional agrarian state to a modern industrial state. Due to the deep national crisis, the social upheaval and loosening of political structures caused by war were more significant than the socio-economic impacts. During this period, the extension of "people's subjectivity" expanded to an unprecedented degree. The subjective structure was richly layered, encompassing all groups in the middle and bottom rungs of Chinese society at that time, as well as parts of the upper-class with United Front [4] inclinations. Although these groups still carried strong characteristics of social subjects in a traditional agrarian state—existing within established relations of production formed with land as the means of production, generally lacking a modern concept of the nation-state and conscious subjectivity—this reflected a pressing need. Under the umbrella of the Anti-Japanese National United Front, the CPC urgently needed to construct a form of political power representing the fundamental interests of the broadest mass of people, continuously empowering the subject to complete the "trinity" of political identity: national independence, civil rights and freedom, and the people's livelihood and happiness.
(1) Locking in the Revolutionary Subject Within the "Small at Both Ends, Large in the Middle" Social Structure
Prior to the Opium War, China was a "state" that was highly loose and fragmented at the level of actual political organization; this concept of a state was entirely different from the modern nation-state as a political organization and an "imagined community." At that time, the common people lacked a national awareness regarding war, believing it to be the "Court’s war"; identity regarding subjectivity was extremely deficient. Later, under the rule of the Kuomintang (KMT) [5] regime, China remained a national structure where the upper and lower societies lacked communication and synergy. It was not until the early stages of the New Democratic Revolution that the Chinese Communists, with Comrade Mao Zedong as their primary representative, based on the Marxist theory of class analysis, provided a preliminary sketch of a "small at both ends, large in the middle" social class structure through their specific understanding, estimation, and grasp of the power balance between the revolutionary ranks and the targets of the revolution.
In the process of Western capitalist countries opening the doors of the Chinese market to export capital, two "new social classes" emerged from the womb of traditional Chinese feudal society—one was the bourgeoisie, developed from merchants, landlords, and bureaucrats; the other was the proletariat, developed from peasants and handicraftsmen. They were both interrelated and reciprocal opposites, the "twin sons" of China's old (feudal) society. Because the imperialist powers colluded with domestic feudal forces, they created a reactionary ruling class represented by the comprador class [6], the feudal landlord class, and the commercial and usurious bourgeoisie. Furthermore, the rampant development of industry and commerce by imperialism within China allowed for some development of Chinese national capitalism, which "played a considerable role in China's political and cultural life; however, it did not become the primary form of China's social economy; its strength was very weak, and most of it maintained more or less contact with foreign imperialism and domestic feudalism." Consequently, it did not create a correspondingly powerful working class in China.
In the winter of 1925, Mao Zedong proposed that China's social structure was characterized by being "small at both ends and large in the middle." He analyzed the two opposing political "united fronts" in China at the time—the "counter-revolutionary united front" composed of the landlord class and the comprador class, and the "revolutionary united front" composed of the "petty bourgeoisie (owner-peasants, small merchants, master handicraftsmen), semi-proletariat (semi-owner peasants, sharecroppers, handicraft workers, shop assistants, street vendors), and the proletariat (industrial workers, coolies, farm laborers, rural proletarians)." He also analyzed the vacillating "middle class" (small landlords, small bankers and proprietors of native banks, merchants of Chinese goods, and owners of Chinese-capital factories) situated between the two fronts. The revolutionary stance and direction of the "middle class" profoundly affected the revolutionary enthusiasm of other classes, particularly the peasantry. Therefore, how to unite the "middle class" was a vital issue for the Chinese Communists of that time. Subsequently, the CPC began to consciously respond at a strategic level to the interest demands of various social classes and strata. Especially regarding land distribution, it fully considered and implemented the interests of the "middle class," gradually incorporating them into the scope of the revolutionary subject. This meant that the identification of political identity historically became an important component of the CPC's system of thought on people's subjectivity.
(2) The Dual Superposition of Economic Conditions and Changes in the International Situation Formed the Source of Revolutionary Momentum
Between 1931 and 1936, China's rural economy fell into a comprehensive crisis. Japan gradually controlled the economic lifelines of North China through the Tanggu Truce and the He-Umezu Agreement; in 1935 alone, smuggled goods reached 200 million yuan, destroying the domestic market upon which national industry relied for survival. This simultaneous advancement of economic colonization and military aggression caused the survival crisis of all classes to break through traditional class interest boundaries. With the full-scale outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in 1937, the resonance between the national crisis and economic hardship profoundly restructured China's social fabric and further strengthened the overall social will for revolution. This was the dialectical unity of national interests and the status of the people as the subject under specific historical circumstances.
The intensification of national contradictions and the disintegration of the economic base formed a dual source of momentum for revolutionary mobilization, manifested in three main aspects. First, economic oppression forced the bourgeoisie to adjust its political choices. Taking the "Fujian Incident" [7] as an example, fiscal difficulties superposed with Chiang Kai-shek's policy of suspending military pay prompted Chen Mingshu and others to turn toward an alliance with the CPC to resist Japan and seek an economic way out. Although the CPC missed a collaborative opportunity due to its "United Front from Below" [8] strategy, it realized that when imperialist economic plunder directly threatens the fiscal and tax base of local power factions, even warlord groups may develop revolutionary potential. Second, the collapse of the national economy reshaped social mobilization patterns. Severe inflation forced the CPC to embed "improving people's livelihood" into its anti-Japanese program: implementing a progressive tax system in the Shaan-Gan-Ning Border Region [9] reduced the burden on poor peasants by 25%; the "25% rent reduction" in the Jin-Cha-Ji [10] region lowered land rent rates from 50% to 37.5%. This adjustment in economic policy both maintained the United Front framework and ensured the sustainability of class mobilization. Furthermore, Japan’s "sustaining the war through war" policy intensified national contradictions in the economic sphere. The colonial economic system incorporated even the comprador class into the chain of plunder, leading to a surge in market share conflicts between the Jiangsu-Zhejiang financial cliques and Japanese enterprises in China. Mao Zedong pointed out that the phenomenon where the "landlord-comprador camp is not united" was essentially the projection of the struggle for imperialist economic spheres of influence within China's ruling cliques.
The dual crisis of economy and politics provided the Anti-Japanese National United Front with supra-class material support. The contrast between the KMT and the CPC in terms of economic governance capabilities transformed "people's subjectivity thought" from a political concept into a perceptible material interest redistribution mechanism. The consensus among the whole nation that "resistance against Japan is above all else" achieved supra-class legitimacy ideologically and realized the dialectical unity of unity and independence, and of national struggle and class struggle, at the level of organizational mobilization. People's subjectivity thought began to play an important role as part of the CPC’s top-level design.
(3) The Dual Recognition Mechanism Contained in the Political Integration of "Each in Their Proper Place"
In On New Democracy, Mao Zedong clearly stated: "The Chinese proletariat, the peasantry, the intellectuals, and other sections of the petty bourgeoisie are the basic forces determining the fate of the country." Under the leadership of the working class, these classes must "each be in their proper place" to build a society of revolutionary San-Min-Chu-I [11]. Because "it is impossible to manage state affairs well if the policy of any political party does not take into account the interests of these classes, if these classes do not have their proper place, and if their members do not have the right to speak." To hold together various social strata and groups during the war, Mao Zedong advocated that all parties must make mutual concessions to a certain extent regarding economic policy, land distribution, and democratic rights. Consequently, the political integration of "each in their proper place" contained a dual recognition mechanism: the recognition of class identity and the recognition of political rights.
On one hand, a series of policy measures such as "reducing rent and interest" were used to allow peasants to obtain means of production and adjust their economic status. "The land of the landlord class is distributed to the peasants as their property, while at the same time private capitalist enterprises are preserved and rich peasant economy is not abolished." The policy of "land to the tiller" was changed to "peasants reduce rent and interest, landlords collect rent and interest." In this way, peasants had food to eat and landlords could also make a living. Regarding labor-capital relations, "other capitalist private property is not confiscated, and the development of capitalist production that 'does not dominate the national livelihood' is not prohibited," but rather "Shanghai capitalists are called upon to establish industries in Northern Jiangsu" and "the liberal ideas of the national bourgeoisie are permitted to exist, and liberal intellectuals and educators are allowed to run newspapers and schools." Through land reform, the status of workers and peasants as "revolutionary subjects" was established; the number of landlord households in the border regions decreased by one-third compared to before the war, their proportion dropping from 3.6% to 2.4% by 1945, and various class identities received recognition. On the other hand, to widely grant political rights and expand political participation, a "three-thirds system" [12] was implemented in the form of political power organization, retaining the right of landlords to discuss politics. In the 1940 instructions regarding the class nature of the anti-Japanese democratic political power, it was clarified that the political power behind enemy lines was, in class essence, a regime of the workers, peasants, and petty bourgeoisie. Compared to the Soviet period's [13] "depriving exploiters of the right to vote," this further expanded the scope of political subjects institutionally, providing institutional protection for the establishment of the Anti-Japanese National United Front.
Through the operation of the dual recognition mechanism, the CPC shaped a new type of political community during the New Democratic Revolution—the Anti-Japanese National United Front—successfully realizing a subject shift from "class revolution" to "national revolution." While maintaining the foundational status of the worker and peasant classes, the number of poor and farm laborers gradually decreased in terms of class relations, while rich and middle peasants became the main class components in the border regions. This subject-shaping strategy of "both transforming and including" allowed all anti-Japanese people to stand in their respective proper posts, ultimately forming the "greatest common denominator" of the revolutionary subject.
Proceeding from the need for political identity and the purpose of integrating social subjects, the Chinese Communists keenly grasped Chinese society...
The structural characteristic of "small at both ends and large in the middle" [14] clarified the extension of the people as the subject at that time. As Mao Zedong stated, the inevitable link between revolutionary war and the masses dictated that war could only be conducted by mobilizing and relying on the masses; it also dictated that the principles of the Party’s work methods must take the interests of the masses as fundamental. This gradually established a mobilization mechanism with "each in their proper place" [15] as its core value principle. On one hand, under specific historical conditions, it was necessary to guarantee the economic rights required for the survival of the masses, consolidating revolutionary forces by solving concrete problems in their production and lives—particularly by meeting the interest demands of different classes and strata to maintain social fairness and justice. On the other hand, it was necessary to follow this value consensus to achieve national independence, realize national unification, establish a democratic regime, and guarantee the basic political rights of the people as the subject. The realization of the people’s status as the subject in Chinese-path modernization thus manifested the synchronicity and unity of the political subject and the economic subject. This explains why "each in their proper place" could become the value principle and practical goal of the Party’s thought on the people as the subject during the New Democratic Revolution [16], greatly mobilizing the broadest democratic groups and ordinary people, rapidly integrating the political forces of various social classes and strata, and attaining political identification on a national scale.
II. Institutional Construction: "Common Prosperity" as a Modernization Goal to Consolidate Economic Subjects
Marx pointed out that socialist society should "re-establish individual property on the basis of the achievements of the capitalist era: namely, on cooperation and the possession in common of the land and of the means of production, which are themselves produced by labor." The reconstruction of this type of ownership is clearly not a subjective fabrication but takes the natural development of productive forces as its basis and premise. Promoting the development of productive forces is the material foundation for escaping poverty and subsequently achieving common prosperity. In the 1950s, Mao Zedong explicitly stated in On the Question of Agricultural Cooperation that for the vast peasantry to achieve common prosperity, it could only be realized through socialism. He thereby set the keynote for common prosperity as an essential requirement and a prominent feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics. The establishment of public ownership provided the institutional foundation for consolidating economic subjects under the guidance of "common prosperity." It also provided the institutional basis for the Party and government to adjust the overall approach to social development after the Reform and Opening-up—shifting from integrating social classes for political mobilization within a revolutionary discourse system toward mobilizing the initiative of the people as the subject through material interests within a market orientation.
(1) "Common Prosperity" Sets a New Ideological Trend to Adapt to New Economic Development Demands
In the early period of Reform and Opening-up, the Chinese Communists, with Comrade Deng Xiaoping as their primary representative, became increasingly aware that the labor initiative of the masses is closely linked to the material interests they obtain. The Party and government urgently needed to explore a new model of economic development that could optimize the allocation of social resources and tangibly raise people's income levels. To achieve the goal of common prosperity, the Central Committee thus initiated an economic mobilization strategy spanning half a century—"allowing some people, some regions, and some enterprises to get rich first"—intended to use their exemplary power to drive the continuous, wave-like forward development of the entire national economy. The famous "Southern Tour Speeches" [17] were brewed under this context to stimulate the market economy. The Party’s thought on the people as the subject, or perhaps its "view of the people," further deepened and developed while conforming to the tides of the times.
First, regarding development goals and value principles, common prosperity further consolidated the foundation of legitimacy for our country's socialist system. As the people are the concrete subjects, guaranteeing their material living conditions is the premise and foundation for freedom at the level of the political state. The "nothingness" of the proletariat's "have-not" status is not "possessing nothing," but rather a "nothingness" that transcends "having"—it is a "having nothing yet having everything" [18]. It refers to the true possession of the means of production by the human being after material wealth has become extremely abundant. Starting from the essential connotation of the human being, material scarcity and poverty are not themselves socialism. During the early period of Reform and Opening-up, China was in the primary stage of socialism, inevitably retaining various pre-socialist modes of production while needing to realize the modernization and marketization of material production within a relatively short time to catch up with or even surpass the industrialization process of Western countries. Therefore, the superiority of the system of socialism with Chinese characteristics during this period was reflected in the universal growth of social wealth and the universal improvement of productive forces.
Second, at the level of social mobilization strategy, "allowing some people to get rich first" greatly stimulated the autonomy, agency, and creativity of the people as the subject. In the process where the individual gradually replaced the enterprise as the rising economic subject and corporate rationality was deconstructed by individual rationality, "the center of economic issues will no longer be the relationship between enterprises and government masked by the so-called relationship between market and government, but the relationship between individuals." The socialist market economy system emphasizes viewing the growth of material wealth based on labor contribution and ability, overturning the traditional small-peasant value of "fearing not scarcity but inequality" [19] commonly held at the start of Reform and Opening-up. By breaking through the ideological debates regarding ownership that existed in previous historical stages, many Chinese people began to view and invest in the market economy positively. This created opportunities for labor groups with the ability to lead the way in getting rich. Under the general concern for social group psychology, while maintaining a holistic and synergistic approach to goals and principles, various forms of ownership were developed under the premise of the primacy of public ownership. This became the realistic path for resolving the principal contradiction in our society at that time.
Finally, regarding basic interpersonal relations, common prosperity presciently responded to the question of how to view the gap between the rich and the poor. Inequality and unfairness are completely different concepts. "Inequality" is an objective difference in the possession of resources; the causes of such differences may be objective variations in knowledge and skills between individual workers, or regional differences in location. "Unfairness," however, evaluates whether the distribution of resources is reasonable from a value perspective, often requiring solutions at the level of institutional structures. The vigorous development of the market economy inevitably results in differences in the degree and timing of material wealth acquisition and growth. In the process of exploring the socialist market economy system, the Party and government realized that capital flows cannot be absolutely homogenized and that the issue of those getting rich first versus those getting rich later in socialist development must be viewed with distinction. The Party and government are committed to creating and exploring a more ideal social institutional system—a road to poverty alleviation and prosperity that takes common prosperity as its development goal, allows for the objective existence of differences in pace during the development process, and balances fairness and efficiency. This is a process of unifying history and logic. Maintaining the status of the people as the subject without wavering in the new historical period represents a process of the Communist Party of China becoming increasingly mature in theory and has laid the ideological foundation for various subsequent institutional arrangements.
(2) Structural Adjustment of the National Economy: New Economic Subjects Emerge as the Times Require
The movement of products in the sense of Marxist political economy is essentially a study of the economic relations between people hidden behind it. Since the 1950s, China inevitably experienced urban economic crises brought about by the introduction of foreign investment. The resulting rural-urban dual structure contradiction was an inward-oriented institutional cost transfer with Chinese characteristics; it thus differed from the industrialization of Western countries, which transferred costs outward. In the early period of Reform and Opening-up, facing conditions of relative passivity and absolute capital scarcity, and proceeding from the realistic national conditions of the primary stage of socialism, China could only choose "opening to the outside world" to attract foreign investment and "reform from within"—eliminating the ownership relations wherein the national economy was entirely under public ownership and allowing, encouraging, and supporting the development of the non-public sector to adapt to the capital accumulation process necessary in the transition to industrialization.
On the one hand, the commodity economy spread rapidly in the cities. In 1981, the government permitted "educated youth" [20] returning to the cities to "set up stalls" and engage in individual business; after 1992, large amounts of foreign capital poured in, followed by the vigorous development of "three-capital" enterprises (foreign-funded, joint ventures, and cooperative enterprises), showing a trend of "moving north and expanding west." On the other hand, the structure of Chinese society began to transform from a rural-urban dual structure to a ternary structure, with the emergence of the rural industrial sector. Some capable individuals emerged to lead the way to wealth, and township and village enterprises (TVEs) rose, accelerating the transfer of the rural labor force from the agricultural sector to non-agricultural sectors. However, at this time, the rural-urban household registration (hukou) policy had not yet loosened, and the flow of the primary industry population to the secondary and tertiary industries was not significant. It was not until the 1990s that the state issued policies encouraging farmers to work in cities, which rapidly promoted the transfer of surplus rural labor to urban areas. At the same time, informal sectors of urban economy and urban employment were formed, creating a new rural-urban quaternary structure. It is precisely this dynamic process that enabled China, throughout its ultra-large-scale urbanization, to realize the integration of rural-urban unity and social structural unity.
Following economic and social development and the implementation of a series of policy adjustments, the extension of the people as the subject in China underwent a historic change during this period. From the functional classification of the official discourse system, there were mainly four types of identity groups. First, the labor subjects under traditional agricultural society (including workers, farmers, and cadres, as well as intellectuals) shifted toward diversified market subjects under the modern industrial social system; together with the "new workers" and "new farmers" appearing alongside the development of the modern rural-urban industrial system, they formed the "entire body of socialist laborers." Second, in the early stages of the germination and development of our market economy, a group obtained "economic-political" dual elite status due to their superior ability to lead the way to wealth. They were continuously incorporated into the Party’s organizational structure, deeply participating in grassroots social management and enhancing the Party’s grassroots governance efficacy. In a sense, they broke the dual structure of the traditional Chinese "official-civilian society" (guanmin shehui), manifesting the structural elasticity of modern society. Third, with the continuous emergence of marketization, a "new social stratum" consisting of "builders of the socialist cause" appeared, primarily composed of personages in the non-public sector and those in liberal professions/freelance intellectuals, concentrated in new economic organizations and new social organizations. As key economic and technical groups for development in the new period, the Party and government actively affirmed and recognized their social status, enabling them to connect with the existing identity system to adapt to new economic development trends. More importantly, their growth and expansion balanced the middle groups of the social structure system—the proportion of economic and technical elites increased significantly. Fourth, "patriots who support socialism" and "patriots who support the reunification of the motherland," composed of non-Party representatives among domestic laborers and builders who support socialism, as well as patriotic personages in Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, and among overseas Chinese who support national unification. Besides these, with the continuous differentiation of the social structure, the income gap has shown a trend of gradual expansion, to some extent causing the marginalization of low-income groups. Although the state has slowed down or even narrowed the growth rate of the gap through a series of policy interventions, because of their large numbers, they have increasingly become a key factor in the stability or instability of our social system structure today.
These completely new social subjects who developed alongside the market economy not only gained economic affirmation and identity, being viewed as active forces in the development of the socialist cause, but also became indispensable basic subjects in China’s transition from a "pyramid-shaped" (literally "earth-character-shaped") social structure to an "olive-shaped" (middle-class dominant) social structure.
(3) Dynamic Balance of Efficiency and Fairness: Improving the Distribution System Based on a Triple Coordination Path
Marx pointed out: "The relations of distribution themselves arise from the relations of production and represent the relations of production themselves from another point of view." Social stratification theory suggests that the income distribution structure primarily reflects the issue of structural social equality through the degree of possession of wealth and resources. Simple possession of material wealth is not the essential connotation of the people as the subject; the fundamental way to realize the people’s economic status as the subject is through the equal right to enjoy the production and creation of material wealth, and the sharing of total social wealth by the people. However, to ensure that economic and social development and the rational distribution of resident income serve as mutual premises, rather than being fragmented into two unrelated "layers of skin," it is necessary to urge the development of productive forces and the rapid accumulation of material wealth while simultaneously balancing efficiency and fairness through the design of a mature and perfected distribution system.
In the process of building a distribution system for the "dynamic balance of efficiency and fairness," China still faces three major structural contradictions: in the field of primary distribution, the proportion of labor remuneration is lower than international levels (the GDP is 123.40 trillion yuan, while the remuneration of laborers in domestic non-financial transaction funds is 63.40 trillion yuan, accounting for 51.3% of GDP); the expansion of returns on capital factors has led to the solidification of a "strong capital, weak labor" pattern. In the redistribution link, the proportion of direct taxes is insufficient (in 2023, personal income tax accounted for 7.2% of total tax revenue, and the lack of property taxes exacerbated the intergenerational transmission of poverty). In the tertiary distribution [21], the scale accounts for only 0.2% of GDP, and incentive tools such as tax incentives for charitable trusts urgently need improvement. These issues have caused social wealth flows to exhibit a "Matthew effect."
Facing the deep-seated contradictions in the field of distribution, the 20th National Congress of the CPC established...
The strategic framework of "constructing a coordinated institutional system of primary distribution, redistribution, and tertiary distribution" has been established. First, primary distribution strengthens the protection of labor rights and interests. For example, the 2023 Outline of the Strategic Plan for Expanding Domestic Demand clearly states the need to "increase the share of labor remuneration in primary distribution," and the revision of the Minimum Wage Provisions raised the benchmark to over 50% of the average per capita consumption expenditure of local urban residents. Regulations on protecting the rights of workers on digital platforms have also standardized the distribution order for new forms of employment. Second, redistribution emphasizes the function of precise adjustment. This is fully reflected in the dynamic adjustment mechanism for special additional deductions for individual income tax, the expansion of pilot reforms for property tax, and the entry of inheritance tax legislation into the preparatory deliberation stage. Third, tertiary distribution [22] is optimized by constructing incentive-compatible mechanisms through new forms of donation and increasing the pre-tax deduction limits for corporate charitable contributions.
The innovation of the system of distribution with Chinese characteristics breaks through the unidirectional logic of traditional "production determines distribution" and constructs a virtuous cycle of "production–distribution–reproduction." The governance efficacy of this "policy combination punch" has become apparent, avoiding the contradiction where capital exclusively claims the right to surplus value while labor creates value—a common result of the rapid accumulation of capital during modernization. It also confirms the institutional advantages of the collaborative governance model of "proactive government + effective market + compassionate society." This institutional evolution both inherits Marx's classic thesis of distribution as "another expression of the relations of production" and creatively develops the contemporary Chinese political economy of "promoting common prosperity through high-quality development." The Party and the government have continuously deepened the conceptual connotation of "common prosperity" at the theoretical level and earnestly fulfilled this political commitment in institutional practice, thereby ensuring that the core tenets of the thinking on the people as the subject develop consistently while advancing with the times.
III. Value Sublimation: "Shared Development" as Top-Level Design in the New Era
Under the context of the New Era, the CPC’s thinking on the people as the subject both "upholds the fundamentals" of Marxist theory and must necessarily "innovate" based on the changes of the times. As digital technology integrates deeply into socio-economic life, the "wealthy-state spiral" previously driven by demand, investment, and exports has begun to shift—amidst the decline of the labor demographic dividend—toward a "wealthy-people spiral" economic growth model. This model relies on "Cloud" (cloud computing, big data), "Network" (Internet, Internet of Things), and "Terminal" (smart terminals, software applications) to achieve supply-side reform for domestic consumer demand. Under the digital economy, new業態 (service sectors) [23], business models, organizational forms, and demands have given rise to new products, services, groups, and values, resulting in a large number of workers in "new forms of employment" [24]. The basic spirit of the Internet—open source, inclusive, and sharing—has fostered new cultural habits among the people. Consequently, the core value system of the CPC’s thinking on the people as the subject has leaped from "common prosperity" to "shared development."
(i) The Digital Economy as the Driving Force for the "Wealthy-People Spiral" Development Model
The past thirty years were a golden era in which an investment-led "wealthy-state spiral" drove the high-speed development of the Chinese economy. However, as the growth of household income and consumption has gradually slowed in recent years and the labor supply-demand relationship has reversed, the traditional "troika" model [25] can no longer adapt to new economic development needs. At the same time, the "digital economy" has emerged as a new modern agenda—a product of the new round of technological revolution, industrial transformation, and interdisciplinary integration—accelerating the intersection and penetration of digital information technology into socio-economic development. This large-scale collaborative entity integrates more social resources, taking data as a core factor of production. The deep integration of knowledge and information with digital technology has caused significant changes in productive forces in both "digital industrialization" and "industrial digitization." On one hand, the development of the digital economy can generate a "wealthy-people spiral" characterized by increased income, falling prices, and upgraded consumption; the resulting new demands, services, and business forms help break through the limitations of traditional economic growth models. On the other hand—and more importantly—the changes in the relations of production caused by digital modes of production have become a vivid illustration of technology's deep integration with the means of labor, the objects of labor, and the laborers themselves, which is then transformed into actual social productive capacity. After stimulating three waves of entrepreneurship—"commercialization," "ecosystemization," and "Internet+"—China's digital economy has ushered in a fourth wave: "intellectualization," which has expanded the boundaries of employment. Digital industrialization and industrial digitization not only provide the internal drive for the transformation of China’s social productive forces but also utilize digital technology to promote the continuous emergence of new models and sectors in industries such as transportation, retail, video, education, and healthcare, thereby giving rise to a completely new structure of digital relations of production. These new social relations unfold according to the specific production logic of the digital economy, gradually replacing traditional social relations and causing comprehensive changes in the Chinese people as the subject.
(ii) The Historical Expansion of the Category of "The People as the Subject" in the Digital Economy Era
The arrival of the digital economy era has profoundly transformed the structure of social subjects in China, driving the prosperity of the new real economy through innovation, giving rise to many new sectors represented by the electronic information industry, and stimulating immense grassroots creativity. This served as the practical impetus for the Party and government to propose "mass entrepreneurship and innovation" [26] at the level of institutional design. In the process of the digital economy restructuring social relations of production, the category of the people as the subject in China has presented four dimensions of evolution. The first category, digital innovators and entrepreneurs, represents advanced productive forces, possessing both information technology capital and the capacity for business model innovation. By integrating social resources, they lead the development of the intelligent Internet; their specificity lies in the combination of capital operation and innovative thinking, forming the top-level design force of the digital economy. The second category, digital industry professionals, includes knowledge elites in fields such as technical R&D and software development, who have risen as "tech aristocrats" by virtue of their professional educational backgrounds and technological innovativeness. These two groups possess the potential for dynamic conversion between employment and entrepreneurship, and their identity mobility reflects the new existence of human capital in the digital economy era. The third category, workers in new forms of employment, constitutes the largest group, covering the mainstay of the service industry such as couriers, livestreamers, and e-commerce practitioners. Their typical characteristics include structural contradictions such as high professional mobility, large income fluctuations (lacking fixed social security), and a lack of skills training (de-skilling or skill simplification), reflecting the institutional lag in protecting workers' rights during the digital transformation of traditional industries. The fourth category, "new workers," supports the manufacturing end of multinational digital enterprises; they are essentially a product of urbanization and industrial upgrading. Statistics show that 85% of China's 260 million migrant workers were born after 1985; they have left the land but have not fully integrated into cities, forming a unique state of existence at the end of the digital economy industrial chain.
The symbiotic relationship between these four categories of subjects constructs a new social production network: innovators and entrepreneurs build the platform architecture, professional personnel provide technical support, workers in new sectors realize value transfer, and manufacturing workers complete the physical transformation. This layered collaboration mechanism shifts the category of the people as the subject from traditional class analysis toward functional positioning analysis. In the construction of political discourse, they collectively constitute the contemporary footnote of "strivers for the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics"—both continuing the classic thesis that "laborers create history" and reshaping the material basis of subjectivity through digital labor. It is worth noting that dynamic transformation is possible among these four groups: professionals can be promoted to entrepreneurs, and new workers can shift to technical positions through skills training. This mobility provides flexible space for social governance in the digital economy era, while also presenting new propositions for balancing efficiency and equity.
(iii) "Shared Development" as the Value Concept Activating the Autonomy of the People as Subject
In response to the new labor relations catalyzed by the digital economy, the Party has promoted the formation of a protection system based on "data rights confirmation, algorithmic governance, and digital human rights." The "Twenty Data Measures" [27] clarified the principle that the benefits of data factors should tilt toward laborers, and pilot cities like Shenzhen have established centers for protecting the rights and interests of platform workers. This process of injecting the concepts of "everyone in their proper place" [28] and "shared development" into the construction of digital civilization both continues the institutional wisdom of "land to the tiller" from the Agrarian Revolution period and creatively unfolds the current reform of "rights to the data-users," opening new horizons for the development of the thinking on the people as the subject in many new fields.
Marx once described a communist community constructed by free individuals after rational choice; within this community, the differences of members are respected, and the mutual exchange and assistance among members can perfect the individuals themselves, while the authority generated by the individuals' identification with the community provides the impetus for the community's continued development. Under the joint action of industrialization, the market economy, science and technology, and globalization, China today is undergoing drastic changes in its social structure, and a series of structural institutional problems are intensifying. On the basis of the collective struggle of all the people and the sustainable development of the economy and society, "sharing the fruits of reform and opening up" has become the Party Central Committee's new political promise and vision for the masses. In 2015, Xi Jinping clearly pointed out at a symposium for non-Party personages: "The development we pursue is development that benefits the people; the prosperity we pursue is common prosperity for all the people. Whether reform and development are successful is ultimately judged by whether the people collectively enjoy the fruits of reform and development." The Party's 13th Five-Year Plan also emphasized: "Sharing is the essential requirement of socialism with Chinese characteristics. We must persist in development for the people, development relying on the people, and development fruits shared by the people, making more effective institutional arrangements so that all the people have a greater sense of gain in the process of joint construction and shared development, enhancing the momentum of development, increasing the unity of the people, and moving steadily toward the goal of common prosperity."
The subjectivity of an individual is built upon the identification with one's own existence and value—that is, the person can govern themselves and determine their own internal manifestations and the external manifestations of their objectified activities. To prevent the possibility of individuals becoming discrete, isolated actors due to the digital development of society, the Party and government must follow the trend of the times and guide it to ensure that "shared development" does not remain merely at the level of cultural habit, but becomes a national code of conduct adapted to social changes. This represents a further optimization from emphasizing immense development in the sphere of production to ensuring the people share in social distribution—including traditional means of production and labor products, as well as new data information and digital commodities—ultimately greatly stimulating the autonomy of the people as the subject through institutional guarantees. "Shared development" takes "common prosperity" as its logical starting point, reflecting at a higher level the point discussed by Marx and Engels that future production in human society "will aim at the prosperity of all." As a basic characteristic of a proletarian party, "people-centeredness" (人民性, renminxing) is thus transformed into a practical philosophy of "taking the people as the center."
IV. Conclusion
The Marxist historical materialist view reveals that the establishment of the people’s status as the subject is essentially a process of the unification of material and spiritual production. The CPC has explored an original ideological trajectory of the people as the subject with "everyone in their proper place," "common prosperity," and "shared development" as its core value systems, finally distilling the fundamental value concept of "people-centered development" that has run through its entire history. Through the three-dimensional construction of economic empowerment, political right-confirmation, and value-enablement, the Party has creatively unified the rich connotations of the people as material subjects, rights subjects, and value subjects into a "trinity" within the practical process. this has established a value orientation for responding to who the "people" are today, where they come from, what their characteristics are, and how they should be viewed and treated. This is the contemporary response of Chinese Communists to the Marxist "free and comprehensive development of the individual," fully demonstrating that the people, as the subjects of social material life, are the end of socialist social development, not the means. In the discourse system of the CPC’s thinking on the people as the subject, the concept of "the people" has transcended the imagined "revolutionary community" and realized a historical leap toward a "community with a shared future" rooted in social reality.
Source: Mao Zedong Thought Study, Issue 5, 2025 Editor: Huihui