A rhetorical shift in China’s political jargon
LOST IN THE Communist Party jargon coming out of China over the past week was a crucial rhetorical shift in the world’s second-largest economy: Tackling inequality is becoming as important as growth. President Xi Jinping inserted this as the change last week in a three-and-a-half hour speech to open the twicea-decade meeting, and it was enshrined in the party’s charter when it ended yesterday.
The language will influence China’s policy – as well as some of the world’s biggest listed companies – over the next few decades after Xi was given a status on par with party stalwarts Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping.
The focus on quality of life instead of boosting incomes reflects the shifting challenges of a nation where a massive increase in wealth has also enhanced divisions between the rich and poor.
Failure to meet the needs of a middle class seeking clean air, trips abroad and foreign education risks undermining the Communist Party’s legitimacy to rule.
“What we’re seeing is a watershed moment, a new milestone,” said Lu Zhengwei, chief economist at Industrial Bank in Shanghai.
“This is giving a clue to what the Communist Party will focus its energy on in the coming years.”
For more than three decades, Communist Party dogma repeated in speeches and taught in schools – circled back to Deng’s declaration in 1978 that some people should get rich first.
That prompted the elite to turn a blind eye to a growing obsession with accumulation of personal wealth, setting the stage for China’s $11 trillion (R150.67trln) economic miracle.
As the economy boomed, so did inequality. China has a tenth of the world’s richest people, but 1 percent of households own a third of the wealth.
One study showed its Gini coefficient, a measure of income inequality, has worsened to 0.61 – well above the 0.4 level economists consider destabilising. – Bloomberg