Modernization efforts brighten global prospects

An unmanned rice planter operates on Qixing Farm on the Sanjiang Plain, a major rice growing area in Heilongjiang province, in May, 2020. [Photo by Wang Lijiao/For China Daily]

China's path to common prosperity seen as development model for world

Qiu Jiebo is among over 400 college graduates who have chosen to return to their hometown of Cixi, Zhejiang province, to participate in rural vitalization during the past decade, creating more channels for increasing rural incomes and leading over 6,000 local farmers to achieve prosperity.

Unlike his parents' generation, Qiu started his own business with the help of blossoming modern technologies. In June last year, he bought the first unmanned rice planter in Cixi. It is equipped with the Beidou Navigation Satellite System and internet of things technology, marking a key step to upgrade traditional equipment, improve efficiency and increase local farmers' incomes.

Over the past decade, Zhejiang, an economic powerhouse and a demonstration zone for achieving common prosperity, has achieved more balanced and coordinated development in its exploration efforts for common prosperity and modernization. The income of residents in urban and rural areas of Zhejiang has more than doubled in the past decade, and the per capita annual income gap between urban and rural residents in Zhejiang has narrowed — from a ratio of 2.37 to 1, to 1.94 to 1.

While delivering a report to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, laid out a key task of advancing the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation on all fronts through a Chinese path to modernization for the next five years and beyond.

Common prosperity for all is a feature of the Chinese path to modernization, and achieving common prosperity is a defining feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics and involves a long historical process, Xi said.

"We will endeavor to maintain and promote social fairness and justice, bring prosperity to all, and prevent polarization," he said.

Experts said China's intensified efforts to strive for common prosperity for all will help boost domestic demand, advance the new development paradigm of "dual circulation" — in which the domestic market is the mainstay and the domestic and international markets reinforce each other — and foster innovation-driven and high-quality development, offering a development path for the world to deal with common challenges and injecting new impetus into global prosperity.

Foreign companies applauded China's solid steps to promote common prosperity, saying this will offer more growth opportunities for global stakeholders.

"With the pursuit of common prosperity as the current goal, it will mean further positive changes in the lives of one-fifth of the global population living in China," said Marc Burrage, managing director of Hays Asia.

"It is based on China following a practical path that will see a great increase in the size of its middle-income population. This will naturally trigger greater demand in the market. That increased demand will undoubtedly lead to more opportunities for foreign businesses," he said.

Denis Depoux, managing director of Roland Berger, said, "Foreign businesses have to be more careful to seize opportunities in industries that are synergizing with the goal of common prosperity."

Experts said the key to achieving common prosperity lies in bridging regional divides and narrowing the gap between rural and urban areas, the rich and the poor, to pursue a more balanced and coordinated development, a crucial part of China's commitment to advancing and expanding Chinese modernization.

"China's path to socialist modernization differs from the West's modernization, as it adheres to the people-centered philosophy of development," said Luo Zhiheng, chief economist at Yuekai Securities.

He highlighted the importance of promoting common prosperity for all amid a more complicated and grimmer international environment and a cloudy global outlook, saying this will provide the world with China's solution to address uneven development.

Jia Ruoxiang, a senior researcher at the National Development and Reform Commission's Institute of Spatial Planning and Regional Economy, said that China, with steady high-quality development, will first make the pie bigger and then divide it properly through reasonable institutional arrangements.

Over the past decade, China, now the world's second-largest economy, achieved sustained and healthy economic development. In 2021, China's economy accounted for 18.5 percent of the world economy, 7.2 percentage points higher than in 2012. China's per capita disposable income stood at 35,128 yuan ($4,830) in 2021, more than double that of 2012.

Jiang Jinquan, head of the Policy Research Office of the CPC Central Committee, told a recent news conference that to advance common prosperity, the relationship between making the "cake" of wealth and the division of the cake must be well managed, and the fair division of the "wealth cake" can happen only on the precondition that the cake has been well made.

China will ensure and improve people's livelihood in the process of development and adhere to an income distribution system under which distribution according to work is the mainstay while multiple forms of distribution exist alongside it, he said.

In the report to the 20th CPC National Congress, Xi highlighted the system of income distribution as the foundational system for promoting common prosperity.

Liu Zhihua contributed to this story.