39.8 trillion RMB, an equivalent of 5.8 trillion US dollars, is the GDP volume of China in the year 2010, which had won it a position of the world's second largest economy after the US. This ranking, combined with an average economic growth of nearly 10% in the past 30 years, has put China under the spotlight as well as triggered a number of questions. What has contributed to the rapid development of China? What does the development of China mean to the rest of the world? Will China surpass the US soon? I would like to take this opportunity to share with you some of my personal idea on those frequently-raised questions.
Before going to the first one, I would like to mention a famous saying that when the leadership is right and the time is right, the people can always be counted upon to follow-to the end and at all costs. For me this could well explain the first and foremost factor contributed to China's fast development: the leadership of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Looking back on the 90-year history of the Party, it is its wise and correct leadership that has successfully united and mobilized Chinese people of all ethnic groups to concentrate their efforts in realizing one goal after another of the revolution and development of China. The leadership, since its founding in July 1921, had run through the New-Democratic Revolution against imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat-capitalism, which led to the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and termination of the long-existed status of semi-colonial and semi-feudal society, and in particular the systematic large-scale socialist construction and the rapid development afterwards. The success and advancement of CCP has won it countrywide admiration and support with people taking pride in becoming a member of the Party. Chinese Communist Party is now the world's largest party, having registered members of more than 80 million and 3.9 million primary organizations.
The first responsibility of a leadership is to define reality. People's Republic of China was founded a country with a large population and weak economic foundation. How could it overcome the poverty and backwardness and feed the over one fifth of the world population? The answer of CCP to this reality is development. Late Comrade Deng Xiaoping emphasized "development" as "of overriding importance" for CCP in its governing and rejuvenating of China, which has been further translated into a notion of "sticking to the development mode suited to national situations", and become the key to our rapid development.
However there has been no existed path that we could follow in developing the socialist economy of China. In the first decades following the founding of the new China, we had been copying the structure and thinking of the then Soviet Union in economic development, the so-called Highly Centralized Planned Economy. By the end of the 1970s, we came to realize that, the Planned Economy mode did not fit the situations of the country at that time. It was based on that very understanding that CCP decided to usher in the Reform and Opening-up policy, centering on economic development through a new path of socialist market economy.
The emphasis on development has successfully and consistently unified thoughts and pooled resources of the whole country on building a modernized China. Considering the change of situations in China, CCP have gradually enriched the content of development by stressing not only speed, but also quality. It raised the scientific viewpoint on development at the beginning of this century, and later wrote that into the Party's Constitution. The viewpoint, with the notion of people foremost as its core, reiterates the importance of development as top priority and calls for a comprehensive, coordinated and consistent development, by taking all factors into consideration and making overall plans. It is believed that only development in such a scientific way could transform the economic growth into rationalized economic and social relations, prosperous social undertakings and harmonious country.
Gold can't be 100% pure and man can't be perfect. While CCP has led Chinese revolution, reform and development to huge success, it also made mistakes like the Great Leap-Forward or the Cultural Revolution, which caused great damage to the economy and disturbed ordinary life of the Chinese people. Upon realizing that, the Party's priority has always been given to a timely and bold correction of the mistakes, to avoid further losses and reorient the development efforts. In its history, CCP never escaped talking about its mistakes during the process of seeking ways of developing China. Instead, it would solemnly admit, reflect upon and try to correct those mistakes, which showcases its image as a big matured party. It is also because of its sense and behavior of responsibility to share its thinking and work together with the general public, that CCP has further won the understanding and support of the latter and promoted the essential unity with the people in pushing forward development of our country.
What does China's rise mean to the rest of the world? While China has tremendously increased its economic volume and comprehensive power in the past few decades, we will still pursue a road of peaceful development in the future. The development of China is no threat to other countries. We believe in peaceful and win-win cooperation instead of zero-sum game. In the past thousands of years, the Chinese people has always been yearning for and advocating a harmonious world but without uniformity. A generally peaceful environment at home and abroad has made it possible for China to achieve development during the past several decades and to focus entirely on development in the fundamental interests of the Chinese people. A peaceful world is all the more important for China to concentrate on development in the future. China will therefore remain steadfast on the path of peaceful development and work with other countries in a joint endeavor to build a harmonious world of enduring peace and common prosperity. That explains why the Information Office of Chinese State Council has recently published a White Paper on China's Peaceful Development, which is just another comprehensive manifesto of China's position on its peaceful rise.
Furthermore, China will continue to uphold the principle of equality and mutual benefit in its cooperations with other countries. China will never seek hegemonic power or colonize others. One of the core values of the Chinese civilization is that don't do unto others what you don't want others do unto you. If one does not want to be bullied or oppressed, then he shall not bully or oppress others. China had long suffered unequal exploitation of resources and wealth and dominance by the colonists before the founding of PRC and would naturally empathize with the feelings of those oppressed or unfairly treated people. China will never impose its own will on others or pursue self interests at the expense of the interests of others. We know fully well that in this interdependent world, our own interests and those of others are best served when we work together to expand common interests, share responsibilities and seek win-win outcomes. This understanding and gesture has definitely yielded resonance with our developing partners and further promoted the pragmatic cooperations between China and other countries.
The above-mentioned principle has been well embodied in the past China-African friendly cooperations. China used to support many African countries in achieving national independence, help them build a large number of infrastructure projects including the TAZARA railway and send over 10,000 doctors to Africa in the early decades of the new China, while we restored our legitimate seat in the United Nations with the indispensable support of our African brothers. In the wake of the new century, following the establishment of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, China has on the one hand increased its aids to African countries in areas of infrastructure, health, human resources training etc., and promoted its mutual beneficial cooperations with Africa on the other. There has been frequent communication and cooperation between the two sides in international affairs. More and more Chinese enterprises are doing business or making investment in the African continent, which brings more employment and favorable competition to the African people, and raises the local productivity. Large volume of Chinese products with cheaper price and better quality have entered African market, providing more shopping options and greatly improving the living standards of ordinary African people. The deepening cooperations in various fields have strengthened the China-Africa relations as good friends, good partners and good brothers, and brought substantial benefits to people of our two sides.
As to the third question, the fact is that despite the tremendous increase of gross economic volume and an improved well-being of the populace, there still remains a long way ahead for China to build itself up into a developed country, not to mention the time needed to close the gap between us and US. Just like what Comrade Deng Xiaoping said many years ago, China is both big and small, both strong and weak. It's easy for people outside China to see the growth as its big and strong side while we, the insiders, have seen the difficulties as its small and weak side. China's per-capita GDP in 2010, just exceeding 4,000 US dollars, ranks the 94th in the world and is less than 1/3 of Equatorial Guinea's and 1/10 of US's. The problem of uneven development is prominent with expanding gap between rural and urban areas, and between the West and the East. There are still more than 130 million Chinese people living on less than one dollar a day and 10 million people having no access to electricity. There also exist some other challenges for further development. For example, our rapid economic growth has been achieved at enormous costs of resources and environment. There are still some structural problems in the economic layout. In every sense of the term, China remains a developing country.
As we entered the second decade of the 21st century, the Chinese National People's Congress reviewed and approved China's twelfth Five-Year Plan of economic and social development at its annual session in March of this year. As an important blueprint for China's development over the next five years, the Plan has taken our current circumstances into consideration, outlined a number of significant government policies like restructuring the economy, building an energy-efficient and environmentally friendly society and raising living standard of the populace, and set the first step to overcome the challenges in China's development. It is my strong belief that under the leadership of CCP, the Plan, just like the past ones, will get thorough and comprehensive implementation and China will thus sustain its fast but steady development, which will also be conducive to the development of other countries. There will be, in my mind, a bright future for China and the rest of the world.
Linkage of the Article: http://www.thisdaylive.com/articles/the-inside-story-of-chinas-rise/101953/