Focus now on addressing unbalanced development

With General Secretary Xi Jinping declaring the dawn of a new era of socialism with Chinese characteristics and redefining the primary contradiction of present-day China in his speech at the opening of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the backwardness of social production has officially been rendered a thing of the past.

And, now that the country has become a key supplier of consumer products the world over, from sneakers to personal computers to iPhones; now that domestic industries are increasingly visible at the forefront of new technologies, from big commercial airliners to quantum satellites; now that the government is aspiring to turn the country into a global innovation leader in a dozen years, it does indeed seem anachronistic to continue defining the primary contradiction as being between backward production capacity and people's growing demands. Especially since overcapacity has been the headache for multiple traditional industries.

Thus the new primary contradiction, which identifies the country's fundamental task in the new era as tackling unbalanced, inadequate development, makes sense, because, while retaining the longstanding emphasis on upgrading production capacity, it incorporates the idea of balance.