Goals a guide to proper progress

also the founding director emeritus and a distinguished scholar at the Wilson Center’s Kissinger Institute on China and the United States, has on many occasions said China’s practice of setting development targets is inspirational.

In a 2017 keynote speech at the University of Chicago, Roy said that unlike the US, leaders in China think long term, including ending abject poverty by 2020, and raising the country’s per capita GDP to the level of a medium-income European country by 2049 — the year that marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

“We don’t even have goals for this administration, for example, they’re still in the process of doing so. And my question is, why don’t we have some long-term goals?” he said during his speech.

In an interview with China Daily, Roy reiterated that the US is “much too short-range” in terms of development goals.

“One of the things that I advocate that I think would be a good thing is we should have some private sector institution, at the beginning of every administration say, based on where we are, where we should be four years from now in terms of GDP, the size of the national debt and (other) objectives,” he said.

Regarding China’s anti-corruption campaign, which will be another topic of interest at this year’s two sessions, Roy said ratcheting up graft-busting efforts is the right thing to do.

At the beginning of this year, President Xi Jinping called for the ramping up of the fight against corruption, ensuring that officials “don’t dare” and “have no desire” to be corrupt.

“He’s trying to address the problem more effectively than any of the previous leaders,” Roy said. “So I think it’s a good thing.”