The China of 2020 envisioned by China's Communist leaders was first introduced to the world as a "well-off society" in a Party report in 2002 and changed to a "moderately prosperous society" in an annual government work report two years later.

 

This quiet change in the translation of "xiao kang", an ideal society originally conceived during the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-25 AD) and borrowed by the Communist Party of China to inspire a national drive toward Socialism, could just be a correction of a previously inaccurate translation.

 

But the self-rectification by those at the helm of the world's most populous nation is constant.

 

The connotations of the political catchphrase "building a xiao kang society in all round way" put forward in 2002 at the Party's 16th National Congress has been fleshed out by constant policy recalibrating, says Zhou Tianyong, deputy director of the Research Office of the Party School of the CPC Central Committee.

 

"This makes the goal more attainable and more appealing," he says, days before the opening of the 17th National Congress of CPC, which will decide policies for the country's future.

 

The late Paramount Leader Deng Xiaoping's declarations that "To get rich is glorious" and "Poverty is not Socialism" unleashed a great zeal for economic reform. China has impressed the world by slashing the number of its people in abject poverty from 250 million to 20 million and a GDP rise triple the international average for 29 straight years.

 

Judged from the GDP figures alone, China could probably usher in the "xiao kang" society much soonerer as the country reached half of its economic growth target in a quarter of the projected period, economist Zhuang Jian with the Asian Development Bank points out.

 

The "xiao kang society" was envisioned as moderately prosperous with the per capita GDP tripling from the 2002 figure to US$3,000 by 2020. To achieve the target, the country only needs to keep annual economic growth at a minimum of seven percent. Last year, China's per capita GDP broke the US$2,000 mark while its economy registered a double-digit growth for the fourth consecutive year.

 

"The central issue is will China's sizzling economy sustain itself? To answer the question, you have to take a long-term approach and examine what has been neglected and deserves more emphasis," says Zhuang Jian.

 

SARS, as Premier Wen Jiabao, a CPC member for 42 years, once revealed to foreign journalists, was the crucial trigger to such examination which has resulted in serious considerations on more coordinated development.

 

The unexpected disease outbreak that killed 346 Chinese and infected 5,327 in the six months to June 2003 was the first global emergency ever handled by the CPC leadership with Hu Jintao as the newly-elected general secretary. Some observers regard the event as the activator of the "scientific concept of development", which is hailed as the latest fruit of Marxism-Leninism in China.

 

But the first noticeable policy recalibration came four months later when a CPC Central Committee decision on issues regarding the improvement of the socialist market economic system was promulgated.

 

This document detailed a dozen imminent tasks for the building of the "xiao kang" society, further shifting the Party and government's attention from GDP growth toward many chronic issues, including regional wealth gaps, protection of parochial interests, energy resources and land shortages, environment and ecology, employment opportunities, benefits of workers and the rights of minorities bypassed by the boom.

 

In the following annual plenary sessions of the 16th CPC Central Committee, new policies were constantly designed and summarized with terms such as "raising the Party's governance capability", "coordinated development" and "building a harmonious society", repeated in newspaper headlines, and on TV and radio broadcasts and the speeches of government officials.

 

The government abolished agricultural taxes for farmers and textbook fees for pupils in rural areas. Medical insurance formerly reserved for urbanites became available to farmers while industrial accident insurance become compulsory for migrant laborers.

 

Ministries suffer public humiliation if they fail auditing scrutiny while companies making profits at the expense of the environment can be closed down. High-income earners were taxed more while monopolistic centrally-administered state-owned enterprises were ordered to turn in profits over to state coffers.

 

"It's clear the CPC leadership wants to straighten out the mechanism of the Socialist economy, eliminate corruption and have the government take back responsibilities mistakenly transferred to mere market forces, especially in education, medicare and environmental improvement," says Zhou Tianyong.

 

However, after focusing almost exclusively on the pursuit of economic growth, China finds itself challenged by thorny issues that require long-term solutions. Closing the urban-rural wealth gap which hit 3.3:1 in 2006 -- compared with the international average of 1.8:1 -- for instance, is widely viewed as a huge hurdle, needing far-reaching and massive reform.

 

Zhuang Jian says the 17th National Congress of the CPC, to open on October 15, will continue to touch up the "xiao kang" blueprint and set the tone for future fine-tuning.

 

With a membership of 73 million, about five percent of the population, and another 19 million applicants by June, the Party has established its reputation by constantly repositioning itself while marching toward the goal of Socialism.

 

In a 2004 decision, the CPC Central Committee added "the happiness of the people" and "social harmony" into the general targets of its governance, which also includes economic prosperity and national rejuvenation. Analysts say this was a response to the complaints that many people felt richer, but unhappier.

 

Xiao Kang Magazine teamed up with the National Bureau of Statistics to release an annual national happiness index the following year based on people's living standards, health, income, jobs, and sense of security.

 

The 2007 happiness index published this month edged up by 0.3 points from a year earlier to 79.6, indicating the Chinese were slightly happier this year.

 

But only 28.7 percent of those polled declared they were happier than last year, 44.6 percent were much the same, and 26.7 percent unhappier. Their biggest concerns were health, followed by family, income, freedom, social status and safety.

 

Ma Xuexian, 45, of rural Tongxin, one of China's poorest counties, in northwestern Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, had mixed feelings.

 

His arid village of Shixia, Weizhou Township, had no harvest for three straight years, and he was grateful for grain a subsidy from a cropland-to-forest program. But he still earned less than a dollar a day from rice selling.

 

"In this remote and backward place, I'll take whatever hard jobs make life easier, but what we lack most here are opportunities," he said.

 

An editorial published in the People's Daily in the run-up to the 17th CPC National Congress said the Party would foster core values for building Socialism, which should inspire "strong affinity, charisma and cohesive forces" and "integrate the common wishes of all social strata".

 

(Xinhua News Agency October 13, 2007)