Q: China has recently advocated a "scientific concept of
development." What is the concept aimed at? What problems can it
solve?
A: China has achieved great progress after more than 20 years of
reform and opening up. However, the country's development has
neither been well coordinated nor balanced.
In terms of economic operation, China has been among the
countries that consume the highest amount of energy for unit GDP.
Coal, electricity and oil have been in consistent short supply in
the country. Transport has become a bottleneck. In the past 10
years, China's cultivated land was reduced by five percent, or more
than 6 million hectares.
Many provinces by now have used up their land quotas planned for
up to 2010. Though the Central Government has carried out
macro-controlling measures since 2004, investment in the three big
industries of steel, concrete and electrolytic aluminum is still
growing at a high rate. The increase of credit and bank loans
remains at more than 19 percent. National stock of coal slipped to
a 20-year low. We can see that striking contradictions and problems
in economic operations have not been fundamentally solved.
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At present, China is in the initial stage of industrialization and
so it can't avoid experiencing some of the growing pains that
developed economies went through many years ago.
The central government's efforts to help poor areas develop
economies and the transfer of traditional industries by
multinational corporations from developed countries to China have
increased the pressure on China's resources and degraded the
country's environment. China is not a country with abundant
resources. The resources known at present cannot even satisfy
China's current requirements, not to mention meeting future needs.
Meanwhile, increasing oil imports will make China's national
economic security a more prominent issue.
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Many societal problems have also become more acute, which include
low income of farmers, unemployment, widening income gap,
environmental pollution, irrational industrial structure,
imbalanced regional developments, difficulties of weak groups and
social security.
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The emergence of many of these problems, in a certain sense, is a
result of our misconception of development. As per capita income
has reached US$1,000 in China, the country's development has two
different prospects: Doing well, China will march ahead in smoother
and sustained development; doing poorly, it will face economic and
social risks. Given the current situation, following a scientific
concept of development is the key to whether China can realize
sustainable development.
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If China wants to follow the concept, it must change its economic
growth mode and readjust its economic structure, so as to realize
coordination of speed, structure, quality and efficiency. China
must also insist on the harmonious development of economy and
society, and of cities and countryside, and pay more attention to
speeding up social development while promoting economic
development. The country must also pay more attention to issues
like resources, ecology, environment, harmonious development of
humans and nature.