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Reform and Deepening Reform Comprehensively Serve as the Key to Know About China


Li Yonghui With its rise, China attracted more and more attention from all over the world. People are willing to know how China achieved such great development unprecedented in the history of human beings since the reform and opening up some 30 years ago and what the rise of China means to the rest of the world. It should be admitted that, however, it’s not an easy task for people outside China. The reasons are as follows: first, China is a country with super large scale, and there is great complexity and diversity within itself; second, China is of long history and colorful culture, and for the western world, Chinese culture is much different from their own; third, people are prone to neglect that there is both continuity and changes in the long history of China, for instance, as one of the mainstream schools of Chinese traditional thoughts, Confucianism experienced the development periods of original Confucianism in the era of Confucius, the study of Confucian classics in the Han Dynasty, neo-Confucianism in the Song and Ming Dynasties, and its inherent development and evolvement surpassed the continuity in the surface; fourth, the pace of development and extent of change of China, especially in the past 30 or more years, is overwhelming for foreigners. As to relations between China and EU, such cognitive obstacles intermingled with complex political and economic relations, and bring serious unfavorable influence to the effective exchange and the development of bilateral relations. From the almost idealized romantic description of China by Leibniz and Voltaire, to the contemptuous description “sick man of Asia” and the fear of “yellow peril” after the opium war, from the strategic cooperation in the last days of the cold war to the rapid development of economic relations and the stumbling development of political relations after the cold war, problems existed in the aspects of cognition and communication have been one of the major obstacles hindering the development of bilateral relations. How to overcome this obstacle? In my opinion, the key is to view and understand China from the perspective of change, and in today’s China, it means to learn about China from the perspective of reform and deepening reform comprehensively. For the external world including Europe, reform and deepening reform comprehensively are the best windows for observing China and the best key to understand China, and also the greatest driving force for the development of EU-China relations. For contemporary China, the decision of deepening reform comprehensively not only concerns the development of China, but also plays a fundamental role for China in developing more healthy and harmonious relations with the outside world. First, Chinese culture has the dual nature. On the one hand, Chinese culture is fettered by old conventions, and formed the “super stable structure”, which is rarely seen in the world. One the other hand, Chinese culture emphasizes on changing with the times and unremitting self-improvement. “If you can make things better for one day, you should make them better every day and never stop doing this,” said Cheng Tang, an emperor of the Shang Dynasty. “Being a new citizen,” said in the passage Announcement to Kang in The Book of History. “Although Zhou was an ancient state, it had a reform mission; only innovation could ensure the growth and vitality of a nation,” said in The Book of Songs. These most ancient classics in Chinese history all praised this kind of innovation spirit. However, in the end of the traditional society, the spirit of change gradually waned, and China rested on its laurels of learning day and gradually declined. Meanwhile, the West underwent great reform in the aspects of politics, economy, society and rose rapidly. The decline of China and the rise of the West occurred nearly at the same time, which led to the huge transformation of westerners in recognizing China. In Europe, the original idealized and romantic image of China collapsed, and in its place was a conservative, secluded and rigid image. However, as one of the spiritual clues of Chinese culture, the spirits of change and reform didn’t disappear. Instead, it was sparked under the dual influence of the Western powers invading the East and the spread of West influences to the East. While once this long-suppressed spirit bursts, it produces tremendous energy. The reform movement of 1898 and various revolutions in modern China as well as the reform and opening up since more than 30 years ago, are all the output of such burst. It’s hard to imagine without the thousands-year-long spiritual clue of change and reform, the reform and opening up and its related great achievements can become possible. In this sense, for the understanding of China and Chinese culture, the first and foremost is to probe into the spirit of change and reform contained in it. The behavior of equating traditional Chinese culture with Beijing Opera, calligraphy and kungfu is a serious misunderstanding and misreading of Chinese tradition and Chinese culture. Second, there are two realistic difficulties in the understanding of contemporary China. The first is that China’s development pace is too fast; the second is that China’s development is very imbalanced. China’s development in the past 30 or more years is explosive, diversified and surpassed several historical stages-not only foreigners cannot understand China’s development, there are many confusions even among Chinese people themselves. The famous Chinese writer Lao She once wrote a novel Four Generations under the Same Roof, which told the stories of four generations living together in a big family. Today’s China is just like such a family, with various modern, pre-modern and post-modern factors intermingled, and the prosperity of Pudong New Area of Shanghai coexisted with the poverty and backwardness in some Western regions, which together composed the colorful and complex contemporary China. What we see in China is that various opposite traits live together. On the one hand, China is the world’s second largest economy and according to the prediction of the World Bank, China will overtake the United States in the end of this year to become the world’s largest economy. On the other hand, there is a large amount of population in China living in poverty. In his speech at the College of Europe, Chinese President Xi Jinping mentioned that in China, over 74 million people rely on basic living allowances and more than 200 million people are still living under the poverty line set by the World Bank-that is roughly the population of France, Germany and UK combined. Third, since the Eighteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), China’s reform and opening up has entered into a new stage-the second round of reform and opening up or reform and opening up 2.0. Compared with the first round of reform, this round of reform are more comprehensive and more thorough. One scholar used “double releases” to describe the new round of reform: release the development vitality of the market and release the development vitality of the society. The Decision of the CCCPC on Some Major Issues Concerning Comprehensively Deepening the Reform approved by the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China drew the outline of the blueprint of this round of reform comprehensively and concretely. The Decision covered 15 areas, contained more than 330 major reform initiatives, mentioned the word “reform” for 136 times, which showed the determination and confidence of the new leadership in promoting reform. It is the most authoritative programmatic document for understanding the new round of reform as well as the key to understand today’s China and China in the future. Fourth, the new round of reform is bound to be more challenging—the domestic and international circumstances being more complicated, resistance from various sides, especially from interest groups being more fierce and the themes and tasks of reform being more formidable. Chinese President Xi Jinping has talked about the toughness of this round of reform for many times. “After over 30 years’ development, China’s reform has entered the deep water zone. The easy reform to the satisfaction of all has completed, and the rest are all tough nuts to crack”, said Xi Jinping. Compared with the last round of reform, the new round of reform is very much different. The first is the cost of reform has risen. In the past, reform can be finished with the adjustment of policies and the sparkling of the vitality of the market. While now, only the adjustment of policy is far from sufficient, the corresponding fund support is indispensable. For instance, the reform of health care system, education system and social security system all require huge capital injection. Second, the effects of reform can no longer be seen obviously and quickly. At the beginning of reform and opening up, the effects of a new policy can be seen quickly. For instance, the enacting of the policy of contracting production quotas to individual households brought immediate increase of crop output. While most of the reforms now are fundamental, structural and long term ones, the effects of which can only be seen in the long run. Third, although the mainstream of the society are supportive of reform, the approval rate of reform has declined. A philosopher once said, when one is hungry, there is only one kind of trouble; when he is full, he has to face countless troubles. In the past, when there was widespread poverty, people all support reform and the development of economy. However, with the development of economy and the increase of wealth, social divergence appeared and the demands of different interest groups differ. Some vested interests became the obstacles of reform. Therefore, Chinese President proposed to condense reform consensus and seek common compromise to the largest extent. In addition, in the past, reform is beneficial to all, while now the reform needs to eliminate the malpractices of the society and the interests of some people will be hindered. Naturally, these people will resist reform. Fourth, the reform in the past is extensive and has some defaults. For the purpose of rapid development, we owed a lot in terms of society and environment. While now we seek scientific development and green development in the process of reform, and we have to remedy for what we owed in the past-which will not only hinder the pace of development, but also detriment the interest of some people. Fifth, the complexity of reform has risen. With various political, social and economic problems intermingled and various reforms being pushed forward in a very short period, the reform of China is all the more complicated and overwhelming. Obviously, this new round of reform is extremely difficult to push forward. Fifth, to address new challenges, the new government has taken various new measures. First, besides the old means of “wading across the stream by feeling the way”, the role of top-level design was emphasized. Second, strengthen the leadership with the aid of concentration of power. The CPC Central Committee has set up the Leading Group for Deepening Reform Comprehensively, with President Xi Jinping serving as the leader of the group and Premier Li Keqiang as the deputy leader of the group. In about half a year’s time, the Group has convened three meetings to research and deploy related issues. Third, the new round of reform emphasized the importance of supervision and implementation. Xi Jinping specially emphasized the importance of implementation, in an effort to revert the widespread phenomenon of that “there are always measures to counter” or disobey orders of the CPC Central Committee. On the third conference of the Leading Group for Deepening Reform Comprehensively held on June 7, Xi Jinping proposed that the implementation of deployments should be supervised and inspected, and the implementation of each reform measure should be divided to each thing and each person. The State Council also made corresponding arrangements-eight inspection groups were dispatched to make field investigations on the implementation of policies and measures concerning people’s livelihood. Fourth, the objectives of reform are magnificent, forward-looking as well as explicit and concrete. For example, the third conference of the Group discussed and deployed reforms concerning the taxation system, the household registration system and the judicial system and approved general guidelines like The Overall Scheme of Deepening Reform of the Fiscal and Taxation System and Guideline on Furthering the Reform of Household Registration System as well as specific schemes such as Frame Guidelines on Some Major Issues of the Reform of Judicial System, Pilot Working Program on the Reform of Shanghai Judicial System, and Scheme on the Establishment of Intellectual Property Court. Sixth, facing new challenges, China is accelerating the pace of reform with the aid of the furthering of opening up. While under the influences of global financial crisis and sovereign debt crisis, European Union also faced a series of challenges and desperately needs reform. In the process of reform, EU and China should strengthen exchange and learn from each other. Just as the article of President Xi Jinping published in Dutch Newspaper NRC Handelsblad said, “I am traveling to Europe to promote experience sharing. China hopes to share experience with Europe so that both would benefit and succeed in their reform and development endeavors”. In EU-China exchange, people-to-people exchange should play a special role. Since the establishment of relations between China and European Economic Community in 1975, EU-China relations has undergone three periods roughly, namely the first period of mainly developing political and strategic relations and oppose hegemony together, especially the hegemony of USSR, the second period of mainly developing economic relations, especially trade relations, which witnessed the rapid development of bilateral trade, and the third period now we have entered into, the development of a more comprehensive and balanced relationship with an emphasis on people-to-people exchange. While in people-to-people exchange, exchange on education should be emphasized. In the aspect of educational cooperation between EU and China, we still have a long way to go. For instance, according to statistics released by Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China, among foreigners studying in China in the year 2011, there were 62,442 Koreans, while the number of European students combined is 47,271. 　 (Li Yonghui, Council Member of the Chinese Association for International Understanding, Director of School of International Relations and Diplomacy, Beijing Foreign Studies University)