• Why did China succeed -- marking 40 years of reform and opening-up

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, when China was implementing new development strategies and policies, I was admitted to a university of finance and economics in China. After graduation, I joined the Chinese academy of social sciences for economic research. Later, I went to Europe and the United States for further study. I joined the world bank for China's economic policy research and an investment bank in France for China's macroeconomic and capital market research. Around 2000, a friend and I co-founded a software outsourcing company that used Chinese engineers to provide IT consulting services to the United States. This experience has not only enabled me to fully witness the great changes that have taken place in China over the past 40 years, but also to personally participate in the process of changes in some important areas (agriculture, urbanization, capital market, IT industry, opening to the outside world, etc.).

At the end of 1976, the cultural revolution, which lasted for a whole decade, came to an end. That year, China's total GDP was 1,539. At $400 million (in today's dollars), it accounted for 2. 5% of world GDP that year. 2%; GDP per capita is only 165. At $4 (also in today's dollars), it is 120th; The country's total foreign exchange reserves are only 12. At $5.5 billion, it is less than the reserves of tiny developing countries such as Haiti, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Cyprus, Malta and Morocco. The total value of imports and exports for the year was 134. $300m, just over 5% of America's total trade in goods in the same year; There was no foreign direct investment (FDI), let alone Chinese outward direct investment (ODI); Urban per capita disposable income is only about $150 and $60, respectively. At that time, China was basically an agricultural country, and the proportion of rural population was as high as 82. Six percent, they are almost all in absolute poverty. It is no exaggeration to say that the Chinese economy was on the verge of collapse. At the same time, after a decade of cultural revolution, China's normal political system and system were also severely impacted and in a state of chaos.

In December 1978, the third plenary session of the eleventh central committee of the communist party of China opened a new historical era of reform and opening up

It was under such circumstances that the Chinese people began to think calmly about the country's future and destiny. Chinese leaders began to design new development strategies and policies, and formulate new development plans and measures. At the same time, the basic level of the Chinese people in order to survive the need also began to meet the reality of a variety of practical exploration. By the end of 1978, a new set of development strategy was officially announced and implemented, and China began to embark on a new development path.

After 40 years of efforts, China's GDP has reached 11 percent by 2016. At $2 trillion (in today's dollars), it is the world's second-largest economy after America, and its share of world GDP has risen from $2 trillion in 1976. 2% went up to 14. 8%; Per capita GDP has also reached 8,123. $18 (at current prices), up from the top 120th in 40 years to the 60th. Trade in goods amounted to 3. 66 trillion us dollars, surpassing the United States and ranking first in the world; Foreign exchange reserves 3. At us $01 trillion, it also ranks first in the world. Manufacturing added value is also the world's first; Foreign direct investment (FDI) reached us $133.7 billion, ranking the third in the world. China's foreign direct investment (ODI) has grown from nothing to us $183.1 billion, ranking second in the world behind the us (us $299 billion). According to the global manufacturing competitiveness index 2016 released by deloitte, China's manufacturing competitiveness has ranked first in the world. Among the world's 500 major industrial products, China's output of 220 products, including steel, coal, cement, electrolytic aluminum and refined copper, ranks first in the world. In addition, the added value and export value of China's high-tech industry have surpassed the United States, ranking the first in the world, which indicates that China is also accelerating toward becoming the country with the largest high-tech manufacturing. Overall, China has also transformed itself from an agricultural country into the world's largest manufacturing country. In 2016, the added value of agriculture accounted for only 8 percent of GDP. 6%; At the same time, it has basically completed the transformation from a rural society to an urban society, and the urbanization rate has reached 57. 4%. Great changes have taken place in China in the past 40 years.

As a developing country, how did China achieve this through peaceful means and its own transformation under the existing international order? What experience can we draw from China's rapid development? Can it be used for reference by other developing countries? This is the question that this article tries to answer.

Based on my experience in research, observation, field research, establishing companies with international capital and international experience, I think China's success in the past 40 years can be attributed to the following six reasons.

China has chosen a unique development path suited to its national conditions

According to Chinese officials, they chose socialism with Chinese characteristics. This path is rich in content, but the main points are two: one is to adhere to the socialist direction, the other is to have Chinese characteristics at the same time.

To stick to the socialist direction means to follow the road of common prosperity. Although the government encourages some people to get rich first, the ultimate goal is to achieve common prosperity. As a result, the Chinese government has always attached great importance to poverty alleviation. Many policies and measures have been adopted, and in 40 years, 700 million people have been lifted out of absolute poverty. Great efforts are being made to lift the last 40 million poor people out of poverty. The goal is to lift all the poor people out of absolute poverty by 2020 and make China a country without absolute poverty.

Standing at the southeast exit of lizhi park, north of shennan avenue, shenzhen, the giant portrait of deng xiaoping has become the best place for tourists at home and abroad to remember the chief designer of China's reform and opening-up

In addition to eradicating poverty, China has also made great achievements in improving people's livelihood. First, in recent years, 13 million new jobs have been created for urban residents every year. The illiteracy rate was higher than 30% 40 years ago, but now it is less than 3%. At the same time, the number of people who have received higher education is increasing. At present, the proportion of the labor force who have received higher education has reached about 25%, which was less than zero 40 years ago. 5%; Third, social security has been greatly improved. The nationwide coverage of basic old-age insurance has exceeded 85%, and the number of people participating in basic medical insurance (3 items) has accounted for more than 95% of the total population. Fourth, the income gap between urban and rural areas was once relatively high, especially between 2000 and 2010. However, it has been decreasing year by year since 2011. The gini coefficient has been decreasing year by year since 2008, but it is still at 0. High above 45.

There are other characteristics of China's adherence to the socialist orientation, such as the public ownership of land, the development of state-owned enterprises, the government's relatively strong control over economic activities to a certain extent, and the people's orientation.

Another important feature of China's development path embodies in its Chinese characteristics, one of the more important performance in three aspects: one is the mode of democratic politics in China and the west is not the same: start from their own history, culture, traditional Chinese, there is no separation of powers, but the holy trinity, will adhere to the leadership of the communist party, the people are masters of the country, the rule of law to realize organic unification; At the same time, we will uphold and improve the system of people's congresses, the system of multi-party cooperation and political consultation under the leadership of the communist party of China, the system of regional ethnic autonomy, and the system of self-government at the grass-roots level. Second, the government has played an important role in promoting economic and social development. Three stems from China's history, culture, play an important tradition in some factors, such as Chinese Confucianism some of the basic ideas for China at present how to coordinate and balance the relationship between virtue and law, the relationship between the order and rules, the relationship between the social network and development are still has considerable influence, so the formal institution and ethics are often at work at the same time.

Socialism with Chinese characteristics is a road choice and system choice made by China based on its own national conditions. After decades of practice and improvement, it has certain unique advantages because it plays and coordinates the role of both the government and the market. For example, at a certain stage of national or regional development, it is necessary to pool human, material and financial resources to hold some important events, including some major construction projects. Such a system and system will give full play to its unique advantages. Of course, how to better coordinate the function between the government and the market, China still needs to be further improved in many aspects.

On August 8, 2008, the opening ceremony of the 29th Olympic Games in Beijing was held in the national stadium

From the very beginning of the reform, the first thing for China to do is to develop the production and exchange of commodities and develop a commodity economy. On the one hand, to promote the market economy in China, but also not completely will plan system and the system altogether, but for the new and old two kinds of system and system coexist, as much as possible and make these two aspects play a complementary role, namely through the gradual reform, gradually in the process of dynamic make plan and market reach a relatively balanced state. This has advanced reform and maintained social stability.

After 40 years of efforts, China's market-oriented reform has been constantly deepened. Therefore, China's current slogan is to deepen reform and let the market play a decisive role in the allocation of resources. Even when measured by the heritage foundation's index of economic freedom, China's overall economic freedom is improving. At present, in China, people have no objection to the direction of market-oriented reform, which is quite remarkable. As long as we stick to this point, China's reform cause will get better and better.

It has advanced openness that is integrated into the world

China owes its success to its friendly exchanges with other countries and its opening-up. China's opening up to date has been roughly promoted and developed by three waves: the first wave was the wave of opening up from the 1980s to the 1990s, and its main purpose was to introduce foreign direct investment into infrastructure construction and industrial projects throughout China. Guangdong, fujian, Shanghai and other places along the coast of China are developing fastest relying on their advantageous geographical location and cultural conditions. In guangdong, for example, due to the near Hong Kong, and many of the people of Hong Kong and guangdong already people exist in some areas of relative and blood relationship, so in the "three to fill a" way, many Hong Kong people to investing and in guangdong, the establishment of a large industrial development zone, many village soon into a global manufacturing base, for example, dongguan has become the world's largest electronics production base. By the late 1990s, foreign direct investment into China had reached a peak, basically confirming China's status as the "workshop of the world".

The second big wave of China's opening-up came after its accession to the world trade organization in 2001 and lasted until around 2012. China has accomplished two major tasks during this period. First, it has aligned its trade and investment rules with those of the rest of the world, mainly developed western countries, so that the world can better accept China. Second, China has better connected with the world in the value chain, making China an important part of the global industrial chain and value chain. The world cannot do without China. After more than 10 years of joint efforts in these two aspects, the real value of China's manufacturing industry has been verified and reflected. As a result, the global competitiveness of China's manufacturing industry has not declined, but greatly improved. As one of the important results, the added value of China's manufacturing industry has surpassed that of the United States to become the world's largest manufacturing country. As another important result, China's GDP also exceeds Japan's.

The third wave of China's opening-up began in 2013. Although the initiative to jointly build the "One Belt And One Road" initiative was put forward only four years ago, it started well and achieved good results. This time open, China hopes to make full use of himself in the capital, some practical techniques and some advantages in aspects of professional talents, together with the rest of the world, through to build "area", promote global investment in infrastructure, trade, finance, culture and other aspects of connectivity, realize the joint development of support each other and promote each other, better safeguard world peace and promote the development of the world of open, innovative, inclusive, to strengthen the dialogue among civilizations and eventually build up human destiny community, the people all over the world live a happy day.

Aerial view of the northern bund in Shanghai

In seven, even in the ninety s early eighty s, China generally has the problem of shortage of funds, is looking for investment opportunities in China and overseas investors, and foreign investment, also can to the local tax increases, lead to new jobs, improving local people's income level, increase consumption, and China all had rushed to the introduction of foreign direct investment boom.

Thanks to the efforts of governments at all levels, China's economy is growing fast everywhere, with GDP growth rarely below 10%. A batch of infrastructure was built quickly, and manufacturing grew rapidly in China's vast urban and rural areas. But at the same time, it also brings some problems. For example, due to the low demand for environmental protection at the beginning, the environment in many places has deteriorated seriously. Too much land is being used for industry and too much for agriculture, thanks to cheap or even free land available to foreigners. In the process of introducing foreign businessmen and dealing with Banks, some local government officials have experienced quite a lot of corruption. China is making targeted adjustments in these areas to correct its bias of focusing only on the economy and ignoring other aspects of development.

Maintain political and social stability

One of the key lessons of China's rapid development over the past 40 years is that it has done a good job of maintaining political and social stability. Both Chinese and foreigners can feel that China is a very stable country and a very secure country. So how does China, a multi-ethnic country with the largest population in the world, do it? I think four factors are important:

First, the centralized and unified leadership of the CPC plays a key role in stabilizing China's politics. First, since the communist party of China is the only ruling party, all other democratic parties must participate in the management of state affairs under the leadership of the communist party of China, which determines the basic stability of the political situation. Second, party organizations are widely distributed in China. They have been established everywhere, from the central government to local governments and from the south to the north. Third, the communist party of China has accumulated nearly 100 years of experience in running the country and mastered a set of effective social governance methods that are in line with China's national conditions. Finally, although the communist party of China made some mistakes during the cultural revolution and other periods, it has been able to keep pace with The Times and correct its mistakes bravely. Therefore, it is still supported by the majority of the people, which should be the most important point.

Second, China's party organizations and governments at all levels attach great importance to social stability. In China, there is a well-known saying that "stability is above all", because Chinese people firmly believe that nothing can be done without a stable environment. Therefore, in order to ensure the implementation of social stability work, party organizations and government agencies at all levels in China tend to strengthen their organizational leadership of this work, extending social management organizations to villages in rural areas and urban streets. In order to prevent and counter various forces undermining social stability, strong public security and armed police forces have been organized all over China to maintain social stability and order.

Third, there are sufficient financial resources to ensure the sustainable development of the work of maintaining stability. This is a question of financial security, which is also very important.

Fourth, some ideas in traditional Chinese culture are also conducive to promoting social stability in China. For example, China believes in the doctrine of the mean. This is conducive to social stability.

A series of development plans have been formulated and implemented

No matter which aspect of work we mentioned above, China will make plans and implement them on the basis of careful research. There is a plan for the work of the party, a plan for the work of the government, and a plan for all aspects of the work from top to bottom. There are long-term plans for development in the next 15 and 30 years, medium-term plans for development in the next five years and short-term plans for annual and quarterly development. More importantly, both long-term goals, as well as medium - and short-term goals; Both the overall goal and the specific goal must be implemented and implemented to the letter, and the plan must be turned into reality through real efforts.

Take the five-year plan as an example. Since the founding of new China in 1949, China has formulated 13 five-year development plans. Every five-year development plan points out the main problems and challenges existing in the five years according to the current situation, and then proposes the main goals for the five years as well as the main policies and measures, so as to ensure that the tasks proposed can be completed on schedule and the goals set can be achieved on schedule.

The largest benefit, to develop and implement planning is conducive to the whole nation from top to bottom all understand the future goals and development blueprint, also understand the difficulties and problems as well as the major policies and measures to solve the problem, thus beneficial to condensation of national common power, mix, overcome difficulties and achieve common goals. Since the founding of new China more than 60 years ago, it is with the formulation and implementation of these plans that many problems have been gradually solved and many achievements have been made.

Finally, I would like to make two points in particular. First, when we review and reflect on China's development over the past 40 years, we should never forget the hard work and hard work of the Chinese people. If you leave this point to talk about China's successful experience, all is empty talk. I would therefore like to conclude this article by paying tribute to the industrious Chinese people, including my industrious predecessors. Second, the CPC attaches great importance to learning and absorbing the outstanding achievements of all mankind, especially the outstanding thoughts, and summarizes, digests, absorbs and innovates them to arm itself and guide its practice. Xi jinping thought on socialism with Chinese characteristics for a new era is another major theoretical innovation of the CPC in the new era. I am confident that under the guidance of this vision, the Chinese people will make greater achievements and achieve the great goal of national prosperity and rejuvenation.