China's 'putting people first' development model: Commentary

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Thursday, March 18, 2004

China's 'putting people first' development model: Commentary

While China's development model receives special admiration from the world, questions have arisen one after another: How long will this boom sustain? Will the "Chinese model" go on?

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The last more than 20 years have witnessed the amazing change of the Chinese economy running on an expressway since the late 1970s. While China's development model receives special admiration from the world, questions have arisen one after another: How long will this boom sustain? Will the "Chinese model" go on?

There is actually no perfect model in the world. China has paid a definite price for the brilliant achievements gained through high-speed development: aggravating unbalanced development in the fields of agriculture, environment, etc. has brought the "Chinese model" to a juncture.

The Second Session of the 10th National's People's Congress concluded on Mar.14. The scientific concept of development put forward by China's new generation of collective leadership on the basis of "putting man first" has begun to turn into a concrete practical measure. The "five balanced aspects" (balancing urban and rural development, balancing development among regions, balancing economic and social development, balancing development of man and nature, and balancing domestic development and opening wider to the outside world) and "balanced development" became the major topics of discussions among deputies. A Routers report put it this way: The thinking guiding China's economic development is being shifted from previous over-emphasis on GDP to a more balanced "man-oriented" ideology. China's model has once again become the focus of world attention.

The idea of "putting people first" is not China's original creation, but rather it is the common trend of global economic development. Humankind has traversed a considerably long historical course in their understanding of the development model. It was not until the 1950s that people came to realize that large-scale industrial development had not only consumed huge amounts of natural resources, but had also damaged human beings' living environment. Following the report on the "Limits to Growth" published by the Club of Rome came the "Declaration on Human Environment" passed by the UN General Assembly in 1972, the harmony between human and the natural environment became an important subject in the economic development. In 1987, with the publication of the report "Our Common Future" directed by the then Norwegian Prime Minister Mrs Brundtland, the concept of "sustainable development" became for the first time the globally recognized development concept. Two years afterwards, the UN wrote this into its official document. Having learned a bitter lesson, human beings came to see the following plain truth: development must be carried out by human beings holding themselves responsible to their future generations.

However, it is no easy thing to complete the process from establishing principles to putting them into practice. Beginning from the 1980s, newly emerging countries in East Asia, South Asia, Latin America, and Eastern Europe began to enter one after another into the period of political and economic changes, fierce competition resulted from globalization has tilted the development balance toward efficiency and speed. China is no exception in this regard. The overheating economic expansion has brought about environmental problems, as well as low efficiency of investment in some areas. It was against this backdrop that Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, in his government work report, suggested lowering the anticipated target of this year's economic growth to about 7 percent. This is a numeral embodiment of "sustainable development", indicating that future "steady and speedy" development will replace high-speed driving", and speed will gradually give way to quality.

Another important implication of "putting people first" lies in a balanced distribution system. A review of the past shows that many developed countries began to attach importance to the establishment of a distribution regime only after they had accumulated a certain amount of economic wealth. Take Sweden for example. Its economy was put into a fast traffic lane after going through a difficult stage of postwar recovery as evidenced by employment expansion and continually increased accumulation. A public referendum on old-age pension was held in Sweden in 1957, which was a milestone marking the development of its social welfare system. Historical experience tells us that the modern welfare system is set up on the basis of economic development.

At present, after China has made a historic breakthrough in pushing its per-capita GDP up to US$1000, a balanced development has become the most important thing. It is true that China's economy still lags far behind the level of developed countries, but China has its own unique situation. Let's put aside other things for the time being, at least China cannot do as some West European countries did, that is, reducing population pressure by transferring a large batch of labor force to the American continent at the beginning of industrialization, for this reason, it is impossible for China to follow the beaten track of primitive accumulation traversed by developed countries. Having reached the per-capita GDP US$1,000 level, shall China distribute wealth? Or shall it distribute poverty? China is faced with the same question as are almost all countries which reached this level in the past or are reaching this level at present.

Premier Wen Jiabao's government work report has given an inspiring answer to this question. The answer covers the following aspects: abolishing agricultural tax in five years; basically setting up a medical-care system covering urban and rural areas in three years; building a social security system; doing a good job in the task of employment and reemployment, etc. These are both sharp contradictions in China's economic and social development and outstanding problems concerning the vital interests of the people. Just as the appraisals made by the Financial Times, these measures embody the Chinese government's pursuit of a more equal wealth distribution.

Last year, the UN released its Human Development Report 2003, saying that China is one of the most successful countries in the elimination of poverty. Meanwhile, the report also pointed out that the world still had a population of 1.2 billion in abject poverty and the key to the attainment of the target of eradication of poverty on schedule would lie in whether China and India, the two most populous countries in the world, can achieve sustained economic development. This implies that the "Chinese model" will not only decide the future of China, but also bears on the success or failure of globalization.

China's option of "putting people first" as its development model is the necessary choice of China's economy, as well as a positive contribution to the global development.

By People's Daily Online

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