Can China’s development-based social contract withstand unemployment pressures?
- Improved living standards have been at the core of party mandate for generations but that could backfire in hard times, experts warned
For decades, economic development and improvements to people’s lives have been at the core of the ruling Communist Party’s legitimacy, but experts warn the narrative may backfire in times of high unemployment.
The tone was set in 1992 by China’s then paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, in a famous speech that settled all debate about his economic reforms, delivered during a trip to the southern province of Guangdong.
“Development is the hard truth,” Deng said, and all debates about whether reform policies were capitalist or socialist should stop. Instead, support should go to whatever reforms benefited productivity, the overall strength of the country and living standards of the people.
Generations of Chinese leaders have stayed true to that principle. President Xi Jinping, who in recent years has made poverty relief and the pursuit of “common prosperity” his signature policies, acknowledged as much in his first speech as party leader in 2012.
“Our people love life and yearn for better education, stable jobs, more satisfactory income, greater social security, improved medical and healthcare, more comfortable living conditions, and a better environment,” he said.
