China’s economy is the most resilient in the world, thanks to its governance and planning system.
China’s economy has not contracted in any year since 1976. The country has overcome challenge after challenge. China watchers had predicted the country’s doom and gloom, but it continues to flourish.
Politicians in the Western world have totally misunderstood China. Notwithstanding China’s five-year plans, which started in 1953 and have continued until now (with a short break from 1963-65), China is not a centrally planned economy. Its plans, including five-year plans and practically all other plans, essentially aim at drawing the hearts and minds of nationals together to achieve the planners’ visions in terms of identified goals, which are explicitly spelled out so that everybody understands why the goals are proposed. As advised by President Xi Jinping, five-year plans must be formulated scientifically. They will then work together to achieve them. Governments at all levels will offer support as appropriate.
For example, Made in China 2025, first appeared in the Government Work Report delivered by then-premier Li Keqiang in 2015, became part of the 13th and the 14th five-year plans (2016-20 and 2021-25). Among the Made in China 2025 goals were increasing the Chinese-domestic content of core materials to 40 percent by 2020 and 70 percent by 2025. Despite the pushback from some countries that do not want to see a rising China, analysis by the South China Morning Post in 2024 on the Made in China 2025 plan found that China achieved over 86 percent of the goals. China’s achievements across areas ranging from electric vehicles and renewable energy to new materials and robotics are impressive, and they often beat expectations.
Another example was the “Decision on Winning the Battle Against Poverty”, issued by the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council in November 2015. In China, when a goal is identified as being of merit, even when the leadership has changed, the new leadership will continue to pursue the goal so that there is continuity. Just like Made in China 2025, the success was unprecedented in human history. While the leadership proposed objectives such as “Two Assurances and Three Guarantees” — i.e., assurances of adequate food and clothing, and guarantees of access to compulsory education, basic medical services and safe housing for impoverished rural residents — it took the joint work of many levels of government, as well as support from many State-owned enterprises, and sometimes even the collaboration of private enterprises, to bring the effort to fruition.
It must be noted that China’s plans never consist of top-down directives to do specific things. China’s leadership knows that it must capitalize on people’s ingenuity and creative thinking. In 2020, in this column, I referred to the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area plan as “market-based” and predicted that it would work out just fine. At the time there were many doubters. Many Hong Kong residents thought that we were going to be passively assigned to roles that the central government “dictated” to us. I pointed out that the central government was pro-market and wanted us to do exactly the things that we were best at. However, I said, “Without the perspective of the 11 cities as a team or a city cluster sharing the same interests, their policies could neutralize each other, leading to a waste of resources. For example, competition among the cities based on self-interest could undermine the interest of the entire area.” As things turn out, we have seen a lot of collaborative efforts that are initiated from the bottom up.
It must be noted that China’s plans never consist of top-down directives to do specific things. China’s leadership knows that it must capitalize on people’s ingenuity and creative thinking
The city of Zhuhai in Guangdong province, for example, recently proposed offering talented people from Hong Kong one year of free housing and two years of subsidized housing if they moved there. In 2023, the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Talent Cooperation Office was established, proposing nine talent cooperation projects. Earlier this month, Nansha and Hong Kong signed a memorandum of cooperation to strengthen regional collaboration in recruitment, event organization, service provision and promotion, integrating their respective advantages to attract, utilize and share high-quality talent.
According to a study by Hu Angang and Zhou Shaojie of Tsinghua University, China achieved most of its targets under the 14th Five-Year Plan but missed the energy efficiency and emissions targets. The main thrust of the 14th Five-Year Plan, namely, quality growth and advancing law-based governance, has made significant progress. On the legal front, the Private Sector Promotion Law became effective on May 20. It contributes to a more level playing field and easier access to financing for private businesses. China is also expected to enact its first comprehensive environmental code, the Ecological and Environmental Code, which will become China’s second statutory code after the Civil Code. China’s advance in the rule of law is recognized in the World Bank’s World Governance Indicators (WGI), which showed steady growth from 33.7 in percentile ranking in 1996 to 52.8 (i.e., 2.8 percentage points above the median) in 2023. China’s absence of corruption has been consistently better than the median in the World Justice Project, WGI, and Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index.
I find it incomprehensible that China continues to be rated at near the bottom globally in “constraints on government powers” and “voice and accountability”. In the first quarter, China’s disciplinary inspection and supervision agencies penalized 185,000 individuals, including 14 officials at the provincial and ministerial levels. During this period, 834,000 letters and calls from the public were handled, with 231,000 related to complaints and accusations. Over 500,000 problem leads were addressed, according to Xinhua News Agency.
The author is a former director of the Pan Sutong Shanghai-Hong Kong Economic Policy Research Institute, Lingnan University, and adjunct professor of the Academy for Applied Policy Studies and Education Futures, the Education University of Hong Kong.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
