by Wendy Liu
For Those Whose Concept of China Has Frozen in the 1970s and for Anyone
Who Would Like to Know About Today's China.
6. China's Redness Steadily Shrank...
A look at the changing composition of China's economy between 1980s and 1990s was a shocking experience to anyone who was not paying close attention. In 1985, China's industrial output was still dominated by the state-owned sector at over 60%, followed by the collective-owned sector at around 30%, with the tiny sector of private ownership and other forms of ownership at single-digit levels. Ten years later in 1995, the share of the state sector in the same category was down to 30%, the collective sector's share increased to 40% and the private sector's share reached an all-time high of 30%! What else could better tell the shrinking of China's redness than its shrinking state economy that not long ago had been close to 100%?
While China's economy kept turning from red to a mixed color in the 1990s, the Chinese Communist Party continued to work out new theories or new definitions of existing theories to justify its power in a country now with a brand-new type of economy. The year 1997 was a major milestone in that respect.
In September that year, at the 15th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Mr. Jiang Zemin ,General Secretary of the Party and the President of China, explained in detail in the Party's new official line for the "socialist market economy" within "socialism with Chinese characteristics." The essence of the new line was best captured in the following paragraph:
"To build socialist economy with Chinese characteristics is to develop market economy under socialist conditions and to continuously emancipate and develop productive forces. It means that we must adhere to and perfect the basic economic system, one with socialist public ownership as the main part while in codevelopment with multiple forms of ownership. It means that we must adhere to and perfect the system of market economy and let the market play a fundamental role in the distribution of resources under the state's macro-regulation. It means that we must adhere to and perfect the form of distribution according to work combined with multiple forms of distribution, allow some areas and some people get rich first, bring along others, help those lagging behind and gradually move towards common prosperity. It means that we must adhere to and perfect the opening-up to the world and actively participate in international economic cooperation and competition. And it means that we must ensure that the national economy continues to grow fast and healthy and that people can share the fruit of economic prosperity."
The message that Jiang Zemin spelled out for the Party as well as the country was, in a nutshell, that China was now officially, earnestly and actively developing a market economy within its own brand of socialism, with multiple forms of ownership, with multiple forms of distribution, and the embracing of the concepts of international trade and competition. What are those multiple forms of ownership? They are, in China's official lingo, collective ownership, private ownership, individual ownership, share-holding ownership, plus various forms of Chinese-foreign joint ownership and foreign ownership. To the world, the message was simply an announcement that gone, gone and gone officially were the days when the state ownership defined the Chinese economy and when "distribution according to work" was just a euphemism for egalitarianism!
(To be
continued...)
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