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China makes commitment to social harmony

(New York Times)
Updated: 2006-10-12 14:34

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/12/world/asia/12china.html?_r=1&ref=worl
d&oref=slogin

Beijing --  China's Communist Party, devoted in recent years to expanding
the economy at any cost, on Wednesday endorsed a new doctrine that puts
more emphasis on tackling the severe side effects of unrestrained growth.

The annual meeting of the ruling party's Central Committee formally
adopted President Hu Jintao's proposal to "build a harmonious socialist
society," a move some analysts said was one of most decisive shifts in
the party's thinking since Deng Xiaoping accelerated the push for high
growth rates in the early 1990��s.

The leadership declared that a range of social concerns, including the
surging wealth gap, corruption, pollution and access to education and
medical care, must be placed on a par with economic growth in party
theory and government policy.

"There are many conflicts and problems affecting social harmony," the
Central Committee said in a statement released Wednesday after the close
of its four-day planning session. "Our party has to be more proactive in
recognizing and dissolving these contradictions."

China's economy has recently been expanding at better than 10 percent
annually, faster than any other major economy in the world, and the party
shows no signs of trying to sharply reduce that rate soon.

China needs much higher growth rates than most developed countries to
absorb tens of millions of surplus workers, and even the plans for
addressing environmental woes and creating a sounder welfare system
assume surging tax revenues to pay for them.

"A harmonious society above all needs development," the statement said.

But the "harmonious society" theme contains a multitude of political
positions that reflect Hu's agenda as he has consolidated his power.

He has campaigned doggedly to reduce the party's addiction to
state-backed investment projects, politically driven expansion of
industry and infrastructure and conversion of state-owned land for
speculative real estate development. The fear is that many such projects
generate poor economic returns and add to China's pollution, already
among the worst in the world.

Local officials have tended to ignore central directives on creating a
more sustainable and less speculation-driven economy, partly because they
still believe that they will not be promoted unless they can show stellar
production results in their domains.

Hand-in-hand with the "harmonious society" drive, President Hu and Zeng
Qinghong, the vice president and the leader of the party's secretariat,
have undertaken the most sustained crackdown on official corruption since
the party first embraced market-oriented economic measures nearly three
decades ago.

The anticorruption sweep has already resulted in the detention of Chen
Liangyu, the powerful party boss of Shanghai, as well as senior officials
in Beijing, Tianjin, Fujian, Hunan and other places.

But party officials acknowledge that corruption is endemic in the
one-party system. The mass accumulation of wealth by people who have
political power has helped transform China from one of the most
egalitarian societies in the world to one of the most unequal, with a
yawning urban-rural wealth gap.

Because many people believe that wealth flows from access to power more
than it does from talent or risk-taking, the wealth gap has incited
outrage and is viewed as at least partly responsible for tens of
thousands of mass protests around the country in recent years.

The Central Committee statement did not commit the leadership to specific
targets in reducing the gap beyond stating that it would need to see
improvement by the year 2020.

But analysts say the new platform should result in significant increases
in government spending on education and health care, which tend to be
expensive and inaccessible to peasants, migrant workers and retirees, who
make up the overwhelming majority of China's population.

Energy efficiency and pollution controls have also become a greater
policy focus, though experts say there are still few signs that party
leaders have the resolve to fight pollution at the expense of growth.

"For most of the past 15 years, the leadership has put G.D.P. growth
above everything else," said Mao Shoulong, a public policy expert at
People's University. "Now, they want to make G.D.P. one of a series of
social priorities that will determine whether or not you get promoted."

Mr. Mao said President Hu would probably continue to face obstacles in
putting his plans into effect. Among the problems are that government
revenues as a share of the total economy remain relatively low. Local
officials still care far more about generating growth than abstract goals
like social equality.

"China is still a poor country that faces many of the problems of rich
countries with far more resources," Mr. Mao said. "It is not so easy to
change the focus of the leadership at this stage of development."

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