**: Jia Kang Academic Platform, originally published in Global Times
Author: Jia Kang, Founding Dean of the China Institute of New Supply Economics, Researcher and Doctoral Supervisor of the Chinese Academy of Fiscal Sciences. He served as the director of the Institute of Fiscal Science of the Ministry of Finance for a long time
** There is a concise and eloquent sentence in the famous Southern Conversation: "Development is the last word", which has since become a well-known golden sentence. This understanding is completely in line with the Marxist materialist view of history, that is, it is the development of the productive forces that fundamentally determines the production relations formed by people and the mode of production they synthesize, as well as the social and economic basis derived from the sum of the production relations, and then determines the superstructure of politics, culture, art, law, ideology, and so on. The modernization of socialist China must fully embody the vitality and superiority of the socialist system through the emancipation of the development of the productive forces and the formation of fundamental hard support, and lead to social prosperity and all-round achievements that meet the needs of the masses for a better life and win the heartfelt support of hundreds of millions of people.
The party's basic line of "taking economic construction as the center" and unswervingly adhering to the "last word of development" are the major policies that serve each other as the inside and the outside and guide the overall situation. It matches the implementation of the basic national policy of reform and opening up, and the refinement and expression of the scientific outlook on development and the new development concept on the road of "Sinicization of Marxism"."Development of the last word"It has been upgraded and sublimated in accordance with its internal logic to "comprehensive, coordinated, and sustainable high-quality development is the last word". The newly held 2023 ** Economic Work Conference emphasized: "We must adhere to high-quality development as the last word in the new era, completely, accurately and comprehensively implement the new development concept, and promote the economy to achieve effective qualitative improvement and reasonable quantitative growth." In this regard, the general secretary pointed out: "We must persist in relying on reform and opening up to enhance the endogenous driving force of development, promote in-depth reform and high-level opening up in a coordinated manner, constantly liberate and develop social productive forces, and stimulate and enhance social vitality." These are the fundamental guidelines for our economic and social development. Firmly grasping this upgraded version of the hard truth of development has a bearing on the future and destiny of China's grand cause of modernization, and it also requires us to clarify some erroneous arguments and disorderly statements that have appeared in society in a targeted manner.
Some people have suggested that "taking economic construction as the center" should be changed to "taking the people as the center." This is specious in its expression, and it is easy to confuse people, but its internal logic is disordered, and it will only have the serious undesirable effect of muddying the mud and muddying the waters. The philosophical foundation of innovative development, coordinated development, open development, green development and shared development is "people-oriented" and "people-centered"."To be people-centered, we must unswervingly expand and enhance the scale and level of social reproduction at the practical level, and continuously provide the material conditions for enhancing the people's well-being and the social conditions for promoting the all-round development of the people through sustainable development centered on economic construction. Therefore, "taking economic construction as the center" and "taking the people as the center" are in essence the same thing expressed from different angles and are the inherent requirements of the same development process, and we must never set the two against each other, and we should never simplify, make sense, and lose all logic in putting forward the proposition that only one of the two should be taken, and then completely erroneously deny that taking economic construction as the center and development is the last word.
Some people derogatorily call economic development the last word"GDP growthism"This is a misinterpretation of the last word of development. If we say that we oppose "GDPISM" and "GDP is in charge," this is very necessary, but we must not equate GDP with economic construction, and then deny that the latter's centrality and development are the last word. Theoretically speaking, "GDP" cannot be directly equated with economic construction, so recognizing the limitations of GDP as a technical indicator, changing "GDP in command" and "GDP-centered" is by no means equivalent to changing "taking economic construction as the center." The GDP indicator has its limitations or representative defects that should not be ignored, mainly because it cannot intuitively reflect the state of economic structure and performance, but at this stage, countries around the world have to use this concise technical indicator in the national economic statistics to serve the self-comparison and horizontal comparison of the economic operation situation. What we urgently need to improve is to add other indicators to improve the comprehensive performance evaluation of economic construction. It can be seen from this that not taking GDP as the leader and GDP as the center does not mean giving up taking economic construction as the center and negating the last word of development. Equating these two matters together is conceptually a serious partial generalization, and in fact it is a stealing and thus negating the substantive content of the concept of development.
There is a view that attaching great importance to quality and safety, preventing accidents, and preventing and controlling risks, it is actually not appropriate to emphasize development as the last word, which is another misunderstanding. There are risk factors such as accidents in the development of any country. For example, the United States, which has a strong national strength and advanced technology, has seen more than one tragic accident in which a space shuttle plane crashed and people died. The key is the attitude of the management authorities after the accident and the actions of society to "make amends". We should never ignore or underestimate development because of choking on food and setbacks due to accidents, so as to shake our aspirations for development. In recent years, the impact of some accidents in China has indeed been significantly stronger than in the past; on the one hand, they have exposed hidden dangers and problems in the quality and safety aspects of economic construction, and on the other hand, they are also related to the increasingly developed information dissemination in the information age. In the face of the lessons learned from the accident and the loss of life and property that has already occurred, any cover-up of contradictions and shirking responsibility is a mistake on top of a mistake, but the attitude of denying development as the last word and denying economic construction as the center is also a mistake on top of a mistake. Only by making amends, making comprehensive improvements, and preventing problems in the future can we deal with them correctly. A few years ago, China's high-speed rail industry, which was at the forefront of the world, suffered a big blow due to the Ningbo-Wenzhou bullet train accident, but after all, it was only a stage of pressure and twists and turnsOther technologies such as shipbuilding, mining machinery, and deep-sea exploration, which China has made great progress in and are close to frontier fields, are worthy of drawing inferences from one case and comprehensively strengthening the prevention of accidents and adverse events -- we can appropriately "slow down and be steady", but we must be unswerving in seeking progress while maintaining stability, promoting the positive development of stability with progress, and catching up with and surpassing in the pursuit of "catching up with the last". Accidents and setbacks warn us of how to pay more attention to the implementation of high-quality economic construction under the guidance of the new development concept, and we must not lead to the fallacy of abandoning the central position of economic construction.
Some people believe that there is a contradiction between improving people's livelihood and promoting common prosperity and the last word of development centered on economic construction. As everyone knows, sustainable improvement of people's livelihood and moving towards common prosperity are precisely the premise and foundation of sustainable economic construction and development. Of course, we must continue to pay close attention to and vigorously promote the improvement of people's livelihood, so that it can become a concrete manifestation of allowing all people to share the fruits of reform and opening up. But fundamentally, what does sustainable improvement depend on for people's livelihoods?Without the stamina of economic construction in the process of overall planning and coordination, and blindly focusing only on the improvement of people's livelihood that caters to short-term public opinion, it will fall into the situation of "raising appetites and being unsustainable", and the historical lesson of Latin America's "welfare catch-up on the basis of populism" that has blocked the entire society in the "middle-income trap" and collapsed is also worthy of high vigilance in China. To improve the people's livelihood, objectively it is also necessary to vigorously improve and optimize the distribution system and mechanism, which is to closely integrate "making the cake bigger" with "dividing the cake well", but it should never be extended to the fact that "dividing the cake" can replace the major premise and basic status of "making the cake bigger"; we should never use "common prosperity" to negate "wealth creation," nor should it be understood as abandoning economic construction as the center in the overall sense and turning to distribution-centered.
It should also be pointed out that economic efficiency, social development, transformation of modes, and improvement of people's livelihood all require and call for reform, and reform is ultimately aimed at promoting development and benefiting people's livelihood. The essence, starting point and destination of economic construction refer to the sustainable benefits of people's livelihood brought by construction, so it is necessary to attach great importance to quality, efficiency and sustainability at all times, and based on this, we must emphasize the overall situation in mind that before China completes the comprehensive reform of economy, society, culture and politics, any improvement of quality and efficiency and improvement of people's livelihood is inevitably directly or indirectly closely related to institutional innovation and mechanism transformation. We need to admit that most of the problems and challenges encountered in the prominence of China's economic and social contradictions in terms of quality, efficiency, and people's livelihood at this stage are behind the problems of inadequate reforms (often seriously lagging behind), so in order to improve quality, efficiency and benefits, we must promote development and benefit people's livelihood through reform. If all this is classified as the need to "abandon economic construction as the center," wouldn't that be a serious logical confusion and a staggered prescription and a self-cutting lifeline?
In short, it is very necessary for us to review the simple and vivid experience summary of China's growth pole region: "big development, small difficulties;Small development, big difficulties;Not to develop, the most difficult!"In response to the difficulties and challenges in the complex global changes in a century, China must adhere to the proactive and enterprising idea of "solving problems in development" with strategic determination. According to the basic principles of historical materialism, the productive forces determine the relations of production, and the economy fundamentally determines the financial distribution, social life, and people's livelihood levels. Of course, we cannot fall to the extremes of "productive forces only" and "complete economic determinism," but production and distribution, primary and derivative, primary force and secondary reaction force are absolutely irreversible. If you insist on the opposite, you will be punished by objective laws. Before reform and opening up, is it not painful enough for us not to focus on economic construction for a long time?The lessons of the past are not far away, but now there are some to give up the "economic construction as the center" and "development of the last word" of the confused proposition, the above mentioned and enumerated points, arguments and expressions are different, the background can be said to be obviously in China a few years ago in the process of "** development" in the process of the contradictions highlighted, the construction is booming but the quality is lagging behind, the improvement of social welfare can not catch up with the improvement of people's psychological expectations, etc.;After entering the middle-income stage, it has stimulated the general desire to greatly improve people's livelihood and the emotional factors in the public opinion of "picking up the bowl to eat meat, putting down the bowl and scolding the mother". **The decision-making level has clearly put forward the requirements for comprehensive, coordinated and sustainable development, and together with the overall layout of the five-in-one and the new development concept, it has taken the theme and general outline of the overall situation, and further connected a series of major measures to accelerate the transformation of the development mode and strengthen the improvement of social management, marking the insight of the "last word of development" to further sublimate the "high-quality development is the last word" to keep pace with the times and more careful understanding of the expression - this is in the same line. Development is inevitable and necessary for the CPC to govern and rejuvenate the country, and is the prerequisite and material foundation for sustainably improving people's livelihood, promoting social development, enhancing spiritual civilization, and realizing the strategic goal of modernization. With regard to the basic line of taking economic construction as the center, we absolutely must not give up, we must not dilute it, and we must never waver in it, but we must carry out the upgrading of construction and development on a high-quality track. Let us unswervingly adhere to the upgraded version of the "last word of development"!