Elias Jabr: The West should learn more about China's "high-quality development"

 This year's two sessions of China are of special significance. It is to arrange and deploy the work of the first year of building a socialist modern country in an all-round way, and it also provides an important window for the world to observe Chinese-style modernization. In particular, a series of important contents, including the government work report at the opening ceremony of the National People's Congress, not only let the outside world see the new direction of China's economic development, but also in a world full of uncertainty, instability and even various forms of conflict. Deterministic forces are provided in the world. On a deeper level, China is flexing its muscles in the face of "growing hostility from the West".

In 2023, the expected goal of China's economic development is "GDP growth of about 5%", and the target of new urban employment has been raised to 12 million. This goal is a display of strength. This means that China will still provide an important driving force for the development of the global economy in 2023. China has increasingly become a core factor that must be considered, because not only can it affect the supply and demand structure of the entire world, but it is also the largest trading partner of more than 120 countries around the world. But in the West, little is known about China's ability to set and achieve its goals. The West has only one-sidedly emphasized that compared with the period when the annual economic growth rate exceeded 10%, the "moderate" growth rate that China is now pursuing is lower. This just highlights a misunderstanding of how an economy with Chinese characteristics operates.

For more than 40 years, China has not only grown much faster than the average level of other regions in the world, but also gradually become a commercial, industrial and financial power. In recent decades, China has built a vast manufacturing and financial system with 96 state-owned enterprises and a large public financial project based on a large development bank at its core.

Among the main actions of China as we know it, there is one that must be emphasized in the construction of "high-tech socialism". That is, the wave of institutional innovation in China over the past few decades has resulted in a unique economic system based on the public sector and an economic planning base of 2 million project engineers and economists who leverage disruptive Technological innovations (5G, big data, artificial intelligence, and quantum computers) enable new and superior forms of economic planning and lead us to understand the various forms that socialism can take according to different realities.

Likewise, while many "analysts" predict China's imminent so-called "middle-income trap," in fact, the capitalist world is caught in a big trap: the "neoliberal trap." On the other hand, China has created objective conditions and reached a position where it can exercise the right of choice today. China can choose "how much to grow" and "how to grow". It is against this background that China has proposed a pragmatic economic growth target of 5% and "high-quality development" that has attracted the attention of the outside world. In other words, China has proved to the world that there is no single model of political and economic systems, and that China's economic growth will be based on technological innovation, balanced income distribution, maintaining financial security, and protecting the environment.

The author has emphasized before that the characteristic of China's economic development is that it has opened up a new and superior form of economic planning. In my opinion, this is the basis for understanding the concept of "high-quality development" and grasping the future of China's economy. Much has been said about the socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics and some of its characteristics, but little has been mentioned in the West about the crucial role played by China's top-level planning capabilities over the past few decades. For example, in the past ten years, about 200 million people in China have moved from rural areas to cities, and many people have been lifted out of poverty and become rich.

In addition, this process in China is attended by tens of thousands of government personnel at all levels, who have tried their best to create conditions for the smooth development of this process and avoid conflicts and problems. China's socialist construction has ushered in a new phase in which the masses are mobilized to achieve great goals, one of which is to create millions of jobs in cities every year. Backed by disruptive technological innovations, China's plans may be the next level of human ingenuity applied to social aspirations.

This process has had a huge impact on the world and China's 5% economic growth target. As mentioned earlier, it makes China one of the "guardians" of the health of the global economy and leads a trend that in the complex and unpredictable international reality, each country can formulate its own development strategy. Not only that, China, which has ended the new crown epidemic, has conveyed far more than the benefits brought about by expanding demand to the world. China's economic performance is also gradually exposing the weaknesses of the Western economic model. (The author is a professor at the Department of Economic Sciences, Rio de Janeiro State University, Brazil, and the winner of the 2022 China Special Book Award)