Balance in running a state
- By Di Dongsheng and Zhou Sichang
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E-mail China.org.cn, November 8, 2013
As an ancient Chinese proverb goes, "Governing a big country is as delicate as frying a small fish." The Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of Communist Party of China (CPC) to be held from Nov. 9-12 has drawn global attention as it is expected to outline China's reforms over the next decade.
As the plenary session draws near, various forecasts have been made. However, it is not worthwhile to speculate about specific potential reform policies; we should focus instead on the leadership's thinking. This can help us understand China's political, social and economic growth over the next decade.
"Balance" is the new leadership's key word in running the state. China's economic growth has developed rapidly over the past 20 years which has resulted in a large income gap, environmental deterioration and asset bubbles. To some degree, these problems are rooted in imbalances between politics and the economy, between China and abroad, between state and market and between speed and quality.
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[By Jiao Haiyang/China.org.cn] |
![[By Jiao Haiyang/China.org.cn]](http://images.china.cn/attachement/jpg/site1007/20131108/001ec949c22b13e6e9b717.jpg "[By Jiao Haiyang/China.org.cn]")
The first type of balance is in economic development, which has been China's priority in the past thirty years. Studying the 18th CPC National Congress report, we find new logic frameworks that focus on political, economic, social, cultural and ecological reforms. This is a significant change that deserves great attention. Some policies which had been marginalized or even sacrificed in practice have been put on the same level as economic policy. General-Secretary Xi Jinping once said "I would rather have mountains of trees than have mountains of money." The era of GDP-oriented development is over. China is now entering a comprehensive reform stage.
The second type of balance is between centralization and decentralization. The cycle of "rigidity after centralization and chaos after decentralization", has repeated itself in the history of People's Republic of China.
The new round of reform will strike a balance between the two. Premier Li Keqiang clearly outlined this at his debut press conference at this year's NPC session. Future policy will curb government power and to leave to the market and society what they can do well. But to achieve this goal, some government functions do need to be centralized. For example, environment protection, food and drug safety and judicial powers should be transferred from local to central government in order to weaken the interference of local governments in the market and the distortion in the allocation of resources. This will safeguard the role of the market in the economy.
Some people argue that centralization may not workable because it is not easy for local governments to give up their authority. But there is good reason to be confident in the reform due to the success of the financial reforms of the 1990s. The premier at the time, Zhu Rongji, centralized the financial power and cut city mayors' interference on local banking. He controlled the rising inflation, which was caused by a large amount of non-performing debts from money borrowed by the state-owned enterprises.
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