Wang Mengkui

The theme of this forum – the all-round, balanced and sustainable development of China, is an issue of popular concern both at home and in the international community. What people see from here is not only the further understanding of the development concept, but also China’s options for its development strategy and policy adjustments.

China’s reform and development over the past 20 years have made acknowledged achievement. Now that the issue of getting enough food and clothing for over 10 billion people has been solved and a well-off society has preliminarily been constructed, this has provided a new starting point for China’s development. The new stage of development has raised a higher requirement than the previous stage of getting enough food and clothing for the people. The former notion of development, which advocated pulling out all the stops at whatever cost to provide enough food and clothing for the Chinese people, has to be adjusted accordingly. As socialist market economy system has initially been set up in China and radical changes have taken place in terms of China’s economic system, it is necessary for us to transform the previous notion of development that has taken its root in the planned economy system, and also innovate some notions of development that arose from the initial stage of economic reform. Since China’s socio-economy has not been developed in an all-round, coordinated and sustainable manner in reality, it is essential for China to upgrade its notion of development and readjust its strategy for development as well.

China’s material and technological basis for further development is stronger than that in the past, and the conditions for sustainable and rapid economic growth are available, yet issues to be addressed are also far more complicated than those in the past. China is faced with new circumstances: reform of economic system has led up to material readjustments and restructuring of social interest relations; scientific and technological advancement has boosted the economic structure to undergo optimization and upgrading; the quickened process of industrialization and urbanization has been accompanied by profound changes of social structure; after the Chinese people have enough food and clothing nowadays, and China’s per capita GDP exceeds US$ 1,000 dollars, the social demands have been upgraded and diversified; the level of social development lags behind that of economic development, which has given rise to an accumulated pile of social problems; problems brought about by the widening gap between urban and rural areas, of regional disparity and of the income difference among residents; heavy pressures on employment and social security; formidable challenges posed by rapid economic growth against resources and environment; enormous momentum of development and impact brought along by reform and opening up, and economic globalization. All these have forced China to stand at an important turning point, in its pursuit of socio-economic development. Now we broach the necessity of pursuing development in an all-round, balanced and sustainable manner, we have to seek after an appropriate solution to solve the contradictions and problems that we are faced with in the new stage of development, so as to ensure China, such a giant ship, to make land marked by modernization without let or hindrance.

The major policy orientation for China to realize an all-round, balanced and sustainable development can be summarized in five aspects:

First, pay attention to rural development and solve the problems of farmers to boost coordinated urban and rural development. The gaps between rural and urban residents that are kept expanding have become protruding contradictions in China’s pursuit for socio-economic development. The low level of urbanization, large proportion of rural population and small scale of agricultural operation are the main obstacles to the increase of farmers’ income. China has now entered the mid-stage of industrialization, which is also a pivotal period of time to witness readjustments in terms of the relations between urban and rural areas and the relations between industry and agriculture. On the one hand, economic growth chiefly stems from non-agriculture industries, which can gain growth by means of accumulations on their own. On the other hand, agriculture is a disadvantaged industry; farmers receive no major support to earn more. China’s agriculture is faced with fierce competitions in the international arena, and could not provide backup for the country’s drive for industrialization any more. Instead, the agricultural sector shall receive allowances. The difficulty lies in the fact that China’s non-agricultural population only accounts for a small number of its national total, and the non-agricultural industries are of low efficiency, it is impossible for China to exert much of its strength to do "regurgitation feeding" to its agricultural sectors in a short time. The gap between rural and urban areas will exist in a relatively long period of time and keep expanding in the near future. The State has started to offer more generous support to the rural areas in terms of finance, revenue and other socio-economic policies, which may halt the expansion of such a gap and decrease the intensity of such expansion. It is necessary to continue the development of rural economy vigorously, and at the same time attention must be paid to help solve the issues of rural areas and farmers through industrialization, urbanization and marketization. That is to say, advanced and applicable technologies should be adopted to reconstruct the agricultural sector and the entire rural economy so as to realize the diversion of agricultural population into non-agricultural sectors and industries through industrialization and urbanization, and guide rural economy onto the uniform nationwide marketized and socialized track by deepening the reform, which in fact is a process of gradually changing the dual economic structure of urban and rural areas. By 2020, the level of urbanization will be raised from the current 40% to more than 55%, and the proportion occupied by agricultural laborers in the total employed population may be lowered from current 50% or so to about one-third. In an aim to realize such a change smoothly and without a hitch, and also to avoid or alleviate any possible turmoil and concussion incurred by social changes on a large scale, it is essential to handle the issue properly from two aspects: Attention should be paid to the balanced development of big, medium and small cities and small towns in the aspect of urban planning and development, and the creation of employment opportunities and living conditions for farmers to move to non-agricultural industries, so as to avoid "urban ailment’ brought along with excessive urbanization; In rural areas, the issue of land should be properly handled to prevent a large number of farmers, due to the loss of land, from becoming refugees.

…

If you need the full text, please leave a message on the website.