In the past two decades, China's GDP growth rate is the fastest in the world, but it has also become the most unfair country-the gap between population and urban-rural income is the largest, and the Gini coefficient is close to 0.5 (experts generally estimate it to be above 0.5). What's the relationship between the two? I think it must be related. In the past 20 years, the world's largest transitional countries and developing countries have given priority to efficiency at the expense of fairness, and government policies have been more biased towards capital than labor.
The question is, why do the ruling party and the government do this? As we all know, ... was originally a "poor party", representing the poor. Why does the bias towards capital in the past two decades increasingly represent advanced productive forces rather than vulnerable groups? Internationally, "response" is a neutral word, which means change. From a neutral point of view, the practice after the reform and opening up is reactionary compared with the past practice. But what is the reason?
Just now, I heard sociologists say two words, one is "social exclusion" and the other is "social deprivation". In recent years, the policy has been more biased towards capital than labor, and more biased towards advanced productive forces than vulnerable groups, just as society is rejecting labor and depriving vulnerable groups. But historically, before this, China first experienced a process of capital social exclusion, capitalist social exclusion and advanced productive forces exclusion caused by a very fierce market economy. In this historical process, the ruling party and the government are basically biased towards the poor. As we said just now, the poor are organized to have bargaining power in the market. In fact, the biggest organization is the whole country. We can imagine the past state organizations as big monopoly organizations or even big peasant associations. This organization should protect the poor from being bullied by international capital, so it should be independent. However, what is the result? It is everyone's fairness at a low level, which leads to the fact that the per capita income of China has hardly increased for decades and the national economy is on the verge of collapse. Therefore, such an organizational structure, social prejudice and exclusion are failures.
It is based on the fact of historical failure that the political party and the government began to make great efforts to save and start economic and social transformation. Instead of discriminating against capital and capitalists and the market as in the past, they began to open their doors to welcome capital and introduce the market. But how can we attract capital? Low labor force is the trump card and low land is another trump card. As a result, the labor force and its asset land have been kept at a low level, and only the freely flowing capital has been expanding, and monopoly power has become a factor of capital. So in this process, some problems we are talking about now began to appear. Generally speaking, it is possible to ignore labor more and the vulnerable groups in society more.
So we found that in the past, we discriminated against workers and the weak. The question now is whether to "react" or turn back. Obviously, the answer should not be simple yes orno. In order to find out the direction and thinking of solving the problem and come up with effective countermeasures, we need to study the problem clearly first. Here, I would like to ask a few questions for your consideration.
Sociologist Li Qiang mentioned that experts generally estimate that China's Gini coefficient may actually be as high as 0.5, which is higher than the official statistics. I agree with this point, but I think we should first imagine which problems can be solved and which problems cannot be solved or are difficult to solve within this coefficient of 0.5. For example, when I came here in ancient Malaysia just now, I talked about setting up a labor organization to let workers get better wages. But we can see that his ideas and formulations are basically the same as those of American workers. Now, who cares most about the wages of workers in China, workers in the United States and workers in developed countries, and the wage growth of workers in China? What exactly does this coincidence mean? I'm afraid the problem is not that simple. Actually, we look at the situation in the United States. The United States has not only established a single trade union organization, but also established a national trade union like the AFL. However, in the past few years, the rights and functions of the AFL have become less and less. American capitalists don't need to move their factories out of America. As long as they threaten to move the factory to China, all the trade unions will shut up. American independent candidate Perot saw this and put forward the slogan "Stop globalization, I want to get off". The problem reflected in this is that in globalization, capital that can fully flow has more bargaining power than labor that cannot flow. Globalization is first of all the globalization of capital, which is ahead of the globalization of labor, which makes capital in a more favorable position in the world. Whether you are a worker in China, the United States or Southeast Asia, it is the same. Therefore, some people say that after globalization, there has been an era in which the strong are always strong, the weak are always weak, and the winner takes all. Is it possible for China to solve this contradiction? I think as long as China participates in globalization, it will be difficult to solve this problem until "the proletarians of the whole world unite" becomes a reality temporarily.
Let's imagine that many labor organizations have been established in China, and we have established national trade unions. The ultimate extreme result is nothing more than a reactionary reaction, and all China will become a big trade union. So what? It cannot solve some fundamental contradictions in globalization.
In addition, we must also think about the problems represented by the coefficient of 0.5, which are the most urgent problems we need to solve and which are not. Resources are always limited, and so are the resources to solve social equity. Therefore, the problem we are discussing here is not to build a utopia, but to solve the most urgent problem. Whether we propose social policy or economic policy mainly depends on whether it is effective. So we have to ask, which are the most urgent and which are not.
For the Gini coefficient of 0.5, there is another question: which problems should be solved by the government and which problems should be solved by the society. We may have some problems that need to be solved by the government, but some problems need to be solved by society and people. Our problem is that there has always been only a strong government and principled individuals, and there is no long-haired and very rich and developed social organization in the middle. On the surface, we now have a National People's Congress and a parliament in the west. Our people's congress is equivalent to parliament, but western democracy is different from ours. Most of us are paid by the government. However, this group of people in western parliaments come from the third class and society. These people have their own wages and don't need anyone to pay them. On the contrary, the king needs to take some money from their salary to make up for the lack of income. So, the parliament came, and the members said, since you want my money, you can give me the right to speak. This has a balance between property rights and political power. Many people in China want to care about the disadvantaged groups and set up freemasons, but there are still many problems in the social structure conducive to average income.
For example, we all like rich people to be kind and do good deeds, but there is no incentive system in this respect. The donation system in the United States can be exempted from income tax. And China didn't. The rich are less motivated to donate money than the United States. For another example, it is very difficult for Americans to come to China to help China people and adopt abandoned babies. You have to pay a lot of money, submit a lot of forms and sign a lot of formalities. This shows that it is not so easy for rich people to do good deeds in China.
In fact, helping the poor by the rich has many advantages, especially reducing the sense of injustice. We are not only unfair, but also unfair. Unfair will not necessarily lead to the collapse of our society, but the sense of injustice conveyed by unfairness will lead to the collapse of our society. However, our present society obviously ignores this problem greatly.
Another question to consider is, in 0.5, which problems are caused by the market and which are not, precisely because the market-oriented reform is not in place, and which problems are actually to be solved by non-market-oriented means, or maybe the next market-oriented reform will solve the problem, while other problems may be just the opposite. It is unfair to mention that the income of cleaners is only one-third of that of others. But first, I said it was an improvement. Because decades ago, it was impossible for migrant workers to come to cities. If you come here, you will be caught. Of course, when I say this, it doesn't mean that I think the fairness brought by the market has been put in place. Therefore, the marketization and reform of the labor force in the next step is very important. Let everyone compete for this broom on an equal footing, which will better solve the problem of fairness. But this in itself is a market-oriented solution.
Combining the above two points, I emphasize that not only can we not hand over the patents that call for fairness to the left, but we can also not hand over the patents that solve fairness to the government.
Finally, we must also consider which fairness issues are reasonable and which are unreasonable. In other words, the average income is not the better, and 0.5 is not the lower the better. In a department, the Gini coefficient will also be produced because of the gap in ability, but the resulting income gap is reasonable.
I think we must think clearly about the above problems before we can find a solution. If all issues are put together in a general way, it is not easy to make it clear, and it is not easy to draw a clear policy conclusion.
I especially want to respond to the problem of land urbanization mentioned earlier. This problem originated in the urban-rural fringe, and I think it may be the biggest and most urgent problem at present. According to the data I have seen, in the past few years, local governments took land from farmers at low prices and sold it at high prices, making a profit of 930 billion. When township enterprises first emerged, they also used farmers' land for industrialization. When they started their second venture a few years later, these factories were sold to those people, and farmers still did not benefit from land reform. Therefore, we should see that the source of China's progress in the past 20 years of reform and opening up lies in internationalization, marketization, industrialization and urbanization. However, there are some problems in the institutional system, especially that farmers have not obtained land property rights, and the government has neglected the interests of vulnerable groups. At present, the poorest and most vulnerable group in China society are farmers, who have never received their due land benefits. This contradiction will turn into more and more fierce social contradictions. Therefore, at present, the most urgent problem we need to solve and the most need to come up with solutions may be this problem. In the long run, the fundamental solution is to change the so-called long-term use of land by farmers into long-term ownership, that is, to clarify farmers' ownership of land.