How China used growth to reshape social justice

This year marks the 30th anniversary of China's economic reforms and opening-up initiated by Deng Xiaoping. Over the past 30 years, China maintained an average GDP growth of more than 9 percent. Rapid economic growth has lifted at least 235 million people out of poverty and created a burgeoning urban middle class that has a growing stake in continued reforms and modernization. China's success has created enormous interest among developing countries to distill China's experiences and share knowledge with China. So a natural question is: how has China achieved the economic miracle, and what are the underlying factors unique to China's development process?

In recent China Daily articles, I made some modest attempts to distill part of the success story. This relates to China's unwavering commitment to reforms and openness including its relentless efforts to accede to WTO and attract foreign direct investment; leadership's open-mindedness and pragmatism toward ideas and advice from the West, and a strong "government hand" to mitigate market deficiencies and create new markets particularly for goods and services traditionally in the public domain. In this article, I shall argue that China's massive investment in infrastructure may be another crucial factor in China's miracle that sets China apart from many aspiring developing countries in development strategies.

China's 30-year reforms could be broadly characterized as a process of unleashing market forces, and reshaping the force of social justice to maintain her socialist characteristics. The gradual permeation of the market force at every corner of the economy has restored the fundamental commutative justice that matches reward with incentives and productivity. It has awakened the Chinese spirit of entrepreneurship and risk-taking that was in dormant during planned economy. But to promote market force was not to ignore the much-cherished socialist traditions and real problem of inequality and regional disparity. Social justice, or narrowly distributive justice, calls for progressive income redistribution to mitigate inequality and regional disparity and provide basic public goods in education, health and unemployment and retirement benefits.