No One Should Be Left Behind

China is a country that is good at making and implementing plans in a downto-earth manner. This has played an important role in China’s development in the past four decades, helping the country move out of poverty and become the world’s second-largest economy.

After the launch of reform and opening up in the late 1970s, China entered a fast growth period with an average annual GDP growth rate of more than 9 percent. During this period, a segment of people seized opportunities and got rich ahead of others. They accumulated large amounts of wealth through entrepreneurship and innovation.

In 2021, China realized the goal of eliminating absolute poverty nationwide, thus advancing into a historical stage in which it is striving to achieve common prosperity. This is another significant long-term goal that will take a long time to realize.

Achieving common prosperity means helping all people, especially those in disadvantaged positions, to develop themselves, and narrowing down the wealth gap. This can help establish a more harmonious and just society.

But a harmonious and just society does not mean everybody gets rich at the same time, nor does it refer to rigid egalitarianism. To achieve the goal, people need to pursue prosperity through innovation and hard work. No one can have a happy life by “lying flat” and doing nothing.

Rich regions helping impoverished regions is a good model to narrow down the wealth gap between different regions. Last year, a TV series entitled Minning Town, which was adapted from a real story of the rich helping the poor for common development, became popular among the Chinese people. This series is the epitome of more than 20 years of collaboration between southeast China’s Fujian Province and northwest China’s Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region in eradicating poverty for common prosperity. During the process, Fujian Province did not simply make donations or give out money to the poor people in Ningxia. Instead, it invested in Xihaigu, one of the poorest areas in the autonomous region, to help local people relocate to better places, build factories, grow and process cash crops, among other projects, so that they can lead a better life through their ingenuity and effort. This will be one of the important routes to narrow down the wealth gap between China’s eastern and western regions.

Finding ways to help disadvantaged people is key to achieving common prosperity. They should be given more considerations in policy making and fully mobilized to seek development through hard work, so that they can access more resources to develop themselves.

It is a fact that most disadvantaged people are living in rural areas, especially in remote mountainous areas in western China. Owing to their landlocked geographic location and poor infrastructure, they do not have the same resources as the rich regions in east and south China. Thus, their needs for development opportunities and resources are more urgent and should be given priority to achieve overall development.

They need to be empowered. In the long journey toward achieving common prosperity for all of the 1.4 billion people in China, no one should be left behind.