In 2003, China's per capita GDP exceeded $65,438+0,000 for the first time, and it is expected to reach $3,000 by 2020. According to the law of the world development process, when the per capita GDP is between 500 dollars and 3000 dollars, it means that the economic and social development has entered a new critical stage, which often corresponds to the most serious period of social contradictions. To sum up with what Niu Chang, head of the sustainable development strategy research group of Chinese Academy of Sciences, said, it is a critical period of "economic disorder, social disorder, psychological imbalance and social ethics need to be adjusted and rebuilt".
At this stage, the income gap between urban and rural areas, between regions, between industries and between people with different resources will become larger and larger. With the increase of income and the widening of the gap, various interest relationships become increasingly complex, which can easily lead to social instability if not handled properly. Some countries in Latin America and Southeast Asia have experienced economic stagnation and even social unrest at this stage.
At this stage, social consumption upgrading is increasingly diversified. At the same time, people's demands for participating in social and political life are increasing day by day. It takes a long time to perfect and finalize the new system, and the connection between the old and new systems and mechanisms is not timely and in place, which may lead to social disorder and behavioral anomie.
The uncoordinated economic and social development has directly affected the healthy, stable and rapid development of China's economy. If urbanization lags behind industrialization, rural surplus labor can not be transformed into workers and urban residents in secondary and tertiary industries in time, farmers' income will not increase, purchasing power will not increase, domestic demand will not expand, and secondary and tertiary industries will not develop rapidly. If public services do not generally benefit the broad masses, it will breed discontent and cause many social problems. Interviewed experts have pointed out that it is time to emphasize social development and the coordinated development of economy and society!
Five manifestations of disharmony
Economic development is not equal to social progress. Lu believes that the disharmony of China's economic and social development is embodied in the following points:
First, the economy has developed and the economic structure has been adjusted, but the social structure has not been adjusted accordingly. Social structure covers a wide range, including population structure, employment structure, urban and rural structure, regional structure, class structure and so on. The industrialization level of China has reached the intermediate stage, but the urbanization rate is at a low level. Urbanization lags behind industrialization seriously, and the relationship between urban and rural areas is seriously unbalanced, which hinders the development of the tertiary industry and various social undertakings and directly affects the development of the national economy.
Second, the economy has developed, but social undertakings such as education, science and technology, culture, medical and health care and environmental protection have not developed accordingly, and the development of social undertakings has seriously lagged behind economic development. Take education and health as an example: since the reform and opening up for more than 20 years, China has made great achievements in basically popularizing nine-year compulsory education and basically eliminating illiteracy among young people, but the development of high school education, vocational and technical education and higher education is still not ideal. The data show that in 2000, the average education period of our population was less than 8 years, and 9% of adults were still illiterate.
The allocation of medical and health resources in China is unreasonable, and the distribution between urban and rural areas is very uneven. According to the data of the Ministry of Health, 87% of farmers pay for medical treatment at their own expense, and the situation of lack of medical care and medicine in rural areas is very serious. In the World Health Report of 2000, the World Health Organization pointed out that China ranked as 1 .88 in terms of "fairness of financial burden" among19 1 countries in the world. This is really out of proportion to China's economic strength ranking sixth in the world.
Third, social management is relatively backward, and all kinds of accidents occur frequently, resulting in huge human, financial and material losses. To realize modernization, a country or region needs not only modern infrastructure construction, but also modern management. That is to say, we usually say that "hardware" should be modernized and "software" should also be modernized. Many cities have high-rise buildings, luxurious hotels, wide and flat roads, squares with various names, lawn trees and hardware, but social management can't keep up, and there are problems such as traffic congestion, difficulty for children to go to school, difficulty for the elderly to seek medical treatment, dirty environment and air pollution.
Fourth, the management system of social undertakings is backward. Most schools, scientific research institutes, cultural units, medical and health institutions and other institutions at all levels in China operate according to the requirements of the planned economic system, with huge institutions, bloated personnel, rigid rules and regulations, high operating costs, low efficiency, poor service quality and people's dissatisfaction.
Fifth, economic growth and employment growth are not coordinated. China is a populous country with a large rural population. At present, it is in the stage of social transformation and economic system transition. Due to structural unemployment and technical unemployment, the employment situation is very severe, which will be a major social problem that has long plagued us.
How to move towards the road of coordination
How to realize the coordinated development of economy and society?
The key is to start with the most prominent principal contradiction at present.
First, fundamentally speaking, to solve the "long and short legs" problem of economic and social development, we must rely on the state and local governments to expand investment in social development and change the current pattern of government investment focusing on economic construction and neglecting social undertakings. Actively tilt towards social undertakings such as science and technology, education and health, and tilt towards ecological environment protection.
Second, the "tangible hand" of the country must play a role in solving the problem of widening income gap between regions and individuals by strengthening the "secondary adjustment" in taxation and other aspects. Cultivating a reasonable social stratum structure should be the core of future social system arrangement and policy choice.
Historical experience shows that in a society with a large middle class, the distribution of social resources is generally reasonable, the distribution gap is relatively small, and the conflicts and contradictions of interests among various social classes are generally small. Such a society is the most stable and sustainable. China is in the process of economic and social transformation, and the social stratum structure is constantly changing. At present, nearly 60% of the rural population and 50% of the labor force are mainly engaged in agriculture. At the same time, there are few middle classes in our society. The proportion of employed people who can be included in the middle class is only about 18%, which is not far from 40% in western countries.
Third, establish an institutional setup for rational allocation of public resources. In the near future, the operable direction of social policy innovation is to rationally allocate public resources. The most effective operating platform is to establish a fair distribution system of public education resources, formulate training policies, and improve the competitiveness and skills education of ordinary members of society, especially vulnerable groups. Education is the minimum condition to promote economic growth and correct all kinds of unfairness, and it is the most important institutional setting to ensure the relative fairness of social opportunities.
Fourth, improve the level of social management. In order to maintain social stability and ensure the coordinated development of economy and society, we should also pay attention to building a modern social management system in an all-round way and actively build a "China social stability early warning system". The early warning system of social stability is a scientific, quantitative and real-time diagnosis, monitoring and early warning of the overall situation of social stability. What is the role of this system in society? Figuratively speaking, it is to warn by monitoring a series of indicators before there is a "fire"; The existing system, like a fire brigade, must wait for the "fire" to appear. At present, some developed countries, such as the United States and Japan, have established corresponding systems to monitor global or regional stability and turmoil hotspots, and provide comprehensive services for their strategic decision-making, security system, foreign policy, economic development, policy after-effect evaluation and comprehensive crisis countermeasures. As a big country in the world, it is necessary for China to develop and operate an early warning system for social stability.
Fifth, implement a proactive employment policy to reduce employment pressure. The research group of "Analysis and Prediction of Social Situation in China" of China Academy of Social Sciences has a series of depressing figures in the Social Blue Book in 2004: since the mid-1990s, the registered unemployment rate in cities and towns has been increasing year by year, with 1995 being 2.9%, 1999 being 3.2% and 2006 being 5438+0.6%. The number of laid-off workers in state-owned enterprises continues to increase. At the end of June, 2003, the number of laid-off workers reached 4.64 million, while the number of re-employed people decreased year by year, with 1998 being 50%, 1999 being 42%, 2000 being 35% and 2006 being 3 1%. The rural surplus labor force continues to increase. In 2002, 94.6 million farmers went to cities and towns to work and do business, and the number is still increasing.
Employment is the foundation of people's livelihood. To coordinate economic and social development, we must attach great importance to employment. Hu Angang, director of Tsinghua University National Studies Center and professor of School of Public Administration, believes that this depends on the transformation of China's economic growth model, so we should correctly understand the relationship between labor-intensive industries and capital-intensive industries.
-Talk for half a month (source)
Since 1990s, the relationship among economic growth, investment growth and employment expansion in China has been greatly weakened, and high economic growth and high capital investment have not brought high employment growth. At that time, it was a capital-intensive and capital-deepening industrialization road, and hundreds of millions of jobs were created nationwide.
To really solve the employment problem, besides implementing a positive employment policy, we must further improve the employment environment and take appropriate policy support. Experts suggest that the following measures should be taken: first, deepen the reform of labor management, household registration system and social security system, establish a unified, open and competitive labor market in the country, and strengthen special inspections on collecting labor market fees and arrears of wages for migrant workers. The second is to increase employment as one of the important indicators to assess the performance of cadres. Governments at all levels should strive to promote the development of labor-intensive industries and build some resource development, ecological construction and public facilities construction projects that meet the needs of economic and social development and can increase employment. Vigorously develop jobs in the fields of public health, urban environmental protection and community service. Third, individuals and families are encouraged to engage in small commodities, catering and market intermediary services by reducing the rent of state-owned houses or giving appropriate rent subsidies and reducing other related taxes and fees. Fourth, encourage the development of non-governmental non-profit social service organizations focusing on education and training, public information services and public management. Fifth, guide and encourage all kinds of social service organizations to provide services for small and medium-sized enterprises, further relax the market access restrictions of domestic private capital, give support in investment, taxation, land use, foreign trade and other aspects, promote the development of non-public economy, and broaden social employment channels.
As long as we really raise our awareness and pay full attention to the significance of all-round economic and social progress, China's economy and society will certainly achieve the goal of all-round, coordinated and sustainable development through hard work.