Achievements of China's thirty years of reform and opening up.?
1. The economic construction has made great achievements.?
In 2007, China's gross domestic product (GDP) reached 24.66 trillion yuan, ranking fourth in the world; the GDP accounted for about 5.5 percent of the world's GDP, while China's GDP was only 1.8 percent of the world's GDP in 1978, which was the lowest in China's history (according to the book by renowned economist Angus Madison, "China's Long-Term Economic Performance" (1998). Calculated according to the purchasing power parity (PPP) method: China's GDP accounted for 32.4% of the world's GDP in 1820, ranking first in the world, falling to 13.2% in 1890, 9.1% in 1919, 5.2% in 1952, 5.0% in 1978, and rising to 11% in 1995 after the Reform and Opening Up).?
At the beginning of the reform and opening up, China's manufacturing industry accounted for less than 1 percent of the world's manufacturing industry, but now its share of the global manufacturing industry has increased to more than 8 percent, and China has become the world's third largest manufacturing country (according to the "2007 - China's Manufacturing Industry Development Research Report," Science Publishing House, December 2007).?
In 2007, the nation's fiscal revenue reached 5.13 trillion yuan (up to 9~10 trillion yuan if extra-tax charges are added), ranking the second in the world; China's total import and export trade amounted to 2.17 trillion U.S. dollars, ranking the third in the world; and its foreign exchange reserves exceeded 1.52 trillion U.S. dollars, ranking the first in the world, while China's foreign exchange reserves amounted to only 167 million dollars in 1978 and and only 5.55 billion U.S. dollars in 1989.?
China's iron and steel production ranks first in the world; in February 2005, China became the world's first major producer to break through the annual output of 200 million tons of iron and steel; China's cement production and coal production is the world's first, more than half of the world's total output; China's TV sets, refrigerators, DVDs, air conditioners, motorcycles, cell phones, pianos, fertilizers, the output of the world's first; China is the world's first phosphorus-producing country, first copper consumer, the first consumer market for machine tools, the first furniture exporter, the first country of telephone users and Internet users, the first producer and exporter of footwear and textiles; China is the world's second-largest shipbuilder, with 70 percent of the world's container manufacturing industry; the number of high-rise buildings in China's cities is the highest in the world; China's production of grains, fruits and vegetables, meat, and cotton is the highest in the world; and China is the world's number one fishery country and a big sheep-raising nation. The country is the world's No. 1 fishery and sheep-raising country.
China also leads the world in spaceflight, high-speed rail, hydroelectric power plants, nuclear power plants, carrier rockets, nuclear weapons, high-performance computers, third-generation mobile communications, and super hybrid rice.?
2. Huge development has been achieved in social life.?
China's urbanization rate has risen from 17.9 percent in 1978 to 41.8 percent in 2005 ("2005 China Urban Forum Beijing Summit", Beijing Evening News, September 14, 2005), 43.9 percent in 2006 (People's Daily Overseas Edition, September 27, 2007), and 44 percent in 2007 (People's Daily Overseas Edition, September 27, 2007). yuan in 1978 to 13,786 yuan in 2007, and the per capita net income of rural residents increased from 133.6 yuan in 1978 to 4,140 yuan in 2007.?
After the reform and opening-up, China has also made greater or certain achievements in education, medical care, social security and cultural programs. Currently, China ranks first in the world in terms of the scale of higher education, the number of doctoral students, and the number of primary and secondary school and university students; the government has successively promoted free and compulsory education in both rural and urban areas, and in 2007 it began a pilot program of free education for teacher training college students. China has taken the first step in realizing educational equity...?
China has the largest number of doctors in the world; the number of diseases prevented by the national immunization program has been expanded from seven to 15, and free treatment has been implemented for patients with AIDS, tuberculosis, schistosomiasis and other major infectious diseases; the state has arranged funds for the renovation and construction of 18,800 township and village health centers, 786 county hospitals, 285 county traditional Chinese medicine hospitals, and 534 county women's and children's health care hospitals, and has equipped 11,700 township and village health centers with medical equipment; the World Health Organization has published a report on the number of medical institutions in China. Medical equipment has been deployed; the World Health Report 2007 published by the World Health Organization shows that the life expectancy of Chinese men and women reached 71 and 74 years respectively in 2007, an increase of more than four years compared with 1978.?
China has also made progress in the area of social security, with the number of people participating in old-age pension, medical care and unemployment insurance reaching 129.3 million, 140.5 million and 103.5 million respectively in 2006 (according to the People's Daily Overseas Edition, Sept. 27, 2007); the system of minimum subsistence guarantees for urban residents continues to be perfected, and a minimum subsistence guarantees system was set up for the country's rural villages in 2007, with 34.519 million rural residents receiving a minimum subsistence guarantee. 34.519 million rural residents were included in the coverage.?
According to World Bank statistics and the international poverty (abject poverty) line standard of $1 per person per day of expenditure, China's poor population of 624 million in 1978 fell to 220 million in 2003. Also according to the World Bank based on purchasing power parity (PPP), in 2007, China's poor population of 135 million people, accounting for 10 percent of the population.?
3. Comparative progress has been made in building democracy and the rule of law.?
Before the reform and opening up, China lacked basic freedoms, and could only follow the orders of the "Four Greats" - the Great Loudness and the Great Debate; the unit system, the people's commune system, the household registration system, the ticket system, and the planned economic system kept the people firmly in bondage; there was no rule of law at that time, and the Constitution could not be applied to the people. At that time, there was no rule of law, and the Constitution could not protect the president of the country, let alone the common people, such as the "Four Clean-ups" movement that persecuted and killed 77,560 people, and the Cultural Revolution that persecuted and killed 7,730,000 people. After the reform and opening up, the Chinese people have gradually gained economic freedom, as well as some political and social freedoms, and to some extent have realized freedom of speech and freedom of movement; the civil rights of the vast majority of nationals have been safeguarded; China's society and culture have become more diversified; democracy has progressed, with the personal dictatorship of the Supreme Leader giving way to the collective leadership of the Politburo Standing Committee; and the cause of building a country based on the rule of law has been progressing in a tortuous manner. The cause of the rule of law has moved forward with twists and turns, with the implementation of the Property Law, the Supervision Law, the Administrative License Law, and the Anti-Monopoly Law; the news media have gotten rid of their wholesale singing of praises, and public opinion supervision and network supervision have increased; and the independent roles of the National People's Congress (NPC), the judiciary, the supervisory authorities, and the auditor have become more and more obvious.?
Two of the problems of China's thirty years of reform and opening up.?
1. The problem of government and political system.?
The biggest mistake of China's thirty years of reform and opening up is that public power is out of control, and no effective measures have been taken to restrain the government and officials, so that a huge privileged interest group has gradually formed, which has seriously impeded the establishment of a civil society and a state governed by the rule of law. At the beginning of the reform and opening-up process, in order to cope with the situation of economic revitalization, mobility of people and liberalization of speech, and to ensure social stability, and at the same time, in order to promote the rapid development of the economy by the hand of the government, the highest authorities in China naturally chose the mode of establishing a big and strong government. However, the market economy requires a small, limited and moderate government, which requires the government not to be in a good position, not to be absent, not to overstep its bounds, and requires public power to withdraw from the micro-economy and the market, and to fulfill the functions of macro-control, provision of public ****-products, establishment of social security, and defense of property rights, or else it would lead to "government failure" --Rent-seeking activities of the government, corruption of officials; self-expansion of government departments, officials continue to expand the size of the funds at their disposal; inefficiency in the work of government agencies, shirking of government responsibilities. And China's reform and opening up has been accompanied by exactly two opposite movements -- liberalization and marketization of the economy, and rigidity of political thinking and massification of the government.?
On the one hand, public power has intervened in the market economy in a big way, developing from the three levels of government before the reform and opening up (the central government--province--county, and the regional administrative offices and people's communes at that time were just the dispatched organizations of the provincial government and the county government, which were very small in scale) to the After the reform and opening up, there are five levels of government (central--provincial--city--county--township) or five and a half levels of government (plus half-level government in village committees); the number of government departments at all levels has increased rapidly, and despite successive "streamlining", more and more organizations have been reduced, and non-staff organizations have multiplied like a malignant tumor. Former Auditor General Li Jinhua once pointed out that: the National Audit Office investigated 31 ministries and commissions, each ministry and commission in addition to dozens of departments and bureaus below, there are an average of 163 set up on their own, non-state agencies; at present, China's counties and municipalities are generally set up with 80 to 120 supernumerary agencies, in addition to countless temporary agencies and institutions. For example, a county-level city with a population of 400,000 and an urban population of less than 250,000 is an economically backward area. But the city's party and government departments, administrative organs, there are 88, plus the four major groups, **** 92. Leading cadres 92 people in the main post, 279 people in the deputy post. Its Construction Bureau under the jurisdiction of 16 units, garden management office has about 200 people, only a diameter of less than a mile park has 150 employees; water company has about 200 people. Its Education Bureau now has nine heads and deputy directors, with an education supervision office, discipline inspection team, trade unions, office, personnel unit, accounting unit, general education unit, adult education unit, vocational education unit, enrollment office, teaching and research room, electrochemical equipment room, teacher training unit, legal system and other 14 units, more than a hundred employees of the organization. Its Water Resources and Electricity Bureau **** more than 90 cadres, subordinate units 9, more than a thousand employees.?
Currently, China's public service personnel (including civil servants, democratic parties, workers, women and youth, supernumerary staff, no market-oriented institutions - developed countries do not have "institutions", each unit is either a government agency or a market entity) totaled 6,000. The total number of civil servants is about 60 million people, and is still increasing by at least 1 million people per year; Zero Point completed the "Chinese Residents' Evaluation of the Government and the Government's Public **** Service Report" under the guidance of Harvard University's Kennedy School, which shows that nearly 70% of the people believe that the total number of government civil servants should be reduced; according to the analysis of civil servants' ratio index to GDP, the number of civil servants in China greatly exceeds that of the developed countries; Chinese civil servants are "more than developed countries". The number of civil servants in China greatly exceeds that of developed countries, and the number of civil servants in China has "exceeded the standard" by nearly 20 times (China Youth Daily, March 30, 2006).
The super-sizing of the government has not had the effect of reinforcing social control; on the contrary, it has led to the "soft-regimeization" of China due to serious government failures and the corrupt behavior of its officials - "[t]here are policies at the top and measures at the bottom. There are policies at the top and countermeasures at the bottom"; "there are laws that are not complied with, and enforcement of the law is against the law"; the authority and impartiality of governments at all levels have been questioned as never before; the creditworthiness of local governments has been declining, and social discontent has been growing; in 2005, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences published the "Blue Book of Society," which showed that, from 1993 to 2003, China's social groups had a high degree of social control. The Social Blue Book published by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 2005 showed that between 1993 and 2003, the number of mass incidents in China increased from 10,000 to 60,000, and the number of people involved increased from about 730,000 to 3,070,000; and some data showed that in 2006, the number of mass incidents had already reached 80,000. It is evident that the idea that big government can adapt to the needs of a market economy and play a stabilizing role in society is totally wrong.?
In China, on the one hand, public power is expanding like a cancer, and on the other hand, it is not subject to effective constraints and supervision. For a long time, in order to criticize and resist the "separation of powers" in the politics of developed countries, the parties concerned have gone so far as to violate the principle of human civilization that "power must be separated and checked and balanced" by concentrating decision-making power, executive power and supervisory power in the hands of one person or a small number of people, forming a homogeneous supervisory body and self-supervisory body. This has led to the formation of an absurd mechanism of collegial supervision and self-supervision. The judiciary, procurators, supervisors, anti-corruption officials, auditors, and journalists at all levels lack the independence they deserve, and the media are controlled by governments at all levels, often becoming tools for self-glorification and evasion of accountability. As a result of the delay in reforming the political system, the system of privileges and the corruption, livelihood, administrative monopoly and disadvantaged groups caused by privileges have become the most serious social problems in China today.
The system of privileges is manifested in the following ways: the hierarchy of privileges, which before the reform and opening up was practiced only among "cadres," has now been extended to all areas of society, such as factories, hospitals, banks, cities, streets, and schools, The system is now extended to all areas of society, including factories, hospitals, banks, cities, streets, schools, research institutes, social organizations, democratic parties, singers, abbots, Taoist temples and Buddhist temples, all of which are classified as hierarchical, and enjoy the corresponding privileges.
Privileged financial system -- In developed countries, the purse strings are in the hands of parliament, and every penny an official spends has to be approved by parliament. China's finances are officialized, arbitrary and secretive finances, and all expenditures are decided by officials; therefore, over the past 25 years, the Chinese government's administrative expenditures have increased by 87 times; according to the People's Daily Online on October 31, 2006, China's yearly public spending on food and drink amounted to 370 billion yuan in 2004, which is equivalent to the expenditure for compulsory education for the whole population; public vehicles are also used for public education. According to People's Daily on October 31, 2006, China's annual public spending on food and drink amounted to 370 billion yuan in 2004, which is equivalent to "eating" away the funds for compulsory education for the whole country; the consumption of 408.5 billion yuan on public vehicles is equivalent to "crushing" away most of the people's health care and pension costs; and the consumption of 300 billion yuan on public spending on trips abroad is equivalent to "touring" away the country's low-income funds for 10 years. The total amount of public money spent on waste each year could be used to build seven or eight Three Gorges projects.
Privileged justice system - Shanghai tycoon Zhou Zhengyi's detention center and prison life also shows privileges everywhere: every meal "four dishes and a soup"; allowed to use cell phones; several times to see a doctor, each time the hospital was ordered to stop outpatient services, exclusively for Zhou Zhengyi a Services; affectionate phone become Zhou Zhengyi want to play on the privilege of the phone; unconstitutional and illegal official privileges - extrajudicial detention of the people's re-education-through-labor system has not been abolished.
Privileged cultural system - 800 million peasants, 200 million migrant workers, more than 300 million people with low standard of living, 40 million landless peasants, 30 million petitioners, 20 million rural left-behind children, 20 million children of migrant workers, 60 million people with disabilities, 200 million workers, 120 million carriers of Hepatitis B virus and millions of AIDS patients have all disappeared from the media and become the silent majority.