Why is Xi Jinping changing the formula of China’s economic wonder for the past 30 years?
‘Unbalanced and inadequate development’ have been the main constraints for people seeking to build better lives, president says
President Xi Jinping on Wednesday redefined the “principal contradiction” faced by Chinese people, signalling a shift in the country’s development focus for the years, if not decades, ahead from unbridled economic growth to better quality expansion and improved wealth distribution.
In in his work report to the national congress, Xi told the party’s nearly 2,300 delegates gathered in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing that as socialism with Chinese characteristics entered a new era, the world’s second largest economy’s “unbalanced and inadequate development” had become the main constraint for people as they sought to build better lives for themselves.
And that, he said, was the principal contradiction of Chinese society, referring to a concept in the communist dogma that defines the most significant or pressing issue that needs to be addressed.
Xi’s new formulation is a significant and bold shift from the previous statement made in 1981 by paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, who defined the principal contradiction – as indicated in the party constitution – as being “between the ever-growing material and cultural needs of the people and backward social productivity”.
Deng’s definition also signalled a shift in the country’s political trajectory, from the “class struggle” under Mao Zedong towards a greater concern for economic development. One of Mao’s biggest mistakes, according to the landmark Chinese Communist Party document published in 1981, was his misreading of China’s “principal contradiction” in the 1960s and early 1970s.
