China Ready to Combat Challenges in 21st Century

China, a country with a history of more than fifty centuries, is ready to face the challenges of a new century.

Chinese leaders and economists are fully aware that for China, which has solved the problem of feeding its 1.26 billion population, the task of becoming a medium-developed country by the middle of the next century is a formidable one.

In half a century, China's population will hit its peak of 1.6 billion, according to the government's population-control plan.

Growing population, decreasing resources, deteriorating environment and structural imbalance all stand in the way on which China is realizing its rejuvenation dream, and the problems will pose a severe threat to the country's sustainable development.

In China's vast rural areas, a large feat was once accomplished by providing sufficient food to 22 percent of the world's population with 7 percent of the world's arable land. But problems still persist with low productivity and the low income level of farmers.

Moreover, it is predicted by the World Bank that more than 9.6 million rural laborers will be forced to find jobs in other sectors in a decade, posing a big burden on employment.

"What we have to face is unprecedented and toughest of all, which is to achieve modernization in rural areas," said Mi Jianguo, director of the macro-economic department of the Development and Research Center under the State Council.

Currently, China's annual per capita gross domestic product (GDP) is less than 800 U.S. dollars, much lower than that of the world's average of 4,600 U.S. dollars. The added-value of the high-technology industry contributes only 2 percent to the country's GDP.

Naturally, the challenges that China came across are inevitable ones in progress and they are nothing but annoyance in growth, said Wang Mengkui, a renowned Chinese economist.

To tackle these problems, China has issued a White Paper on Population, Development for the 21st Century, the first historic guidance on sustainable development.

China also set population-control targets for the next five, ten and fifty years, and stressed the promotion of the family planning policy and low birth rates.

At the turn of the century, China launched great development of west China region to help the resource-rich and vast western areas to achieve a measure of prosperity.

When the strategy is fully implemented, more than 300 million people can be settled in the west and the tendency of ecological deterioration will be checked and rooted out, experts noted.

To narrow its gap with the developed countries, China put forward the policy of rejuvenating the country through science and education. The country is set to raise the proportion of high-technology output value to 30 percent in China's GDP in a decade period.

As China's economy becomes global, China is committed to opening more sectors to the outside world, including telecommunication and finance, and meanwhile, it is encouraging domestic enterprises to invest abroad.

With China's entry into the World Trade Organization, more and

more opportunities and competitions are ahead for Chinese enterprises to face. "We can survive by our active participation in global competition ," said Hai'er's CEO Zhang Ruimin, who had established ten research centers in developed countries.

At the turn of the epoch, China outlined its 10th Five-Year Plan, putting economic restructuring on top of the government's agenda for the first five years in the new century.

Observers considered it a significant move for China to remove all obstacles and establish itself among world powers in the future.

They predicted that China's economy will leap up by three or places in the world list in the coming 20 years.

China has drawn world attention in its efforts for meeting the challenges in the new century, just as Jonathan D. Spence, a professor from the History Department of Yale University, once commented, if China can tackle all its problems, the 21st century will become "a century of China."

People's Daily Online --- http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/