Leftist call riles media, public
Advocacy for death of private sector draws repercussions
A Chinese commentator’s rare call for the slow death of the private sector and a return to a full State-run economy was met with the full force of State media and Chinese expert outrage on Wednesday.
Wu Xiaoping, founder of Hangzhou-based Miyun Technology Limited, admitted to being the anonymous author of an online article in Beijingbased news and information content platform Jinri Toutiao headlined “The private Chinese economy has completed its task of assisting the development of the public economy, and should gradually wither away,” according to screenshot images of The Beijing News on Tuesday.
The article caused a massive splash on Chinese social media before being deleted.
Changanjian, a popular Wemedia focusing on China’s politics and law, lambasted Wu on Thursday.
To drive out the private sector was to jeopardize the country’s employment, “as over 80 percent of jobs and 90 percent of new jobs come from the private sector,” the article said.
Once the private sector ceased to exist, half the country’s schools and hospitals would also disappear, and the country’s economy would be reduced to what it was before 1978, the first year of reform and opening-up, argued the article.
Wu declined to respond to the barrage of disagreement with his extreme leftist opinion, news website ifeng.com reported on Thursday.
Wu’s proposition equates to turning back the clock and those who support such a voice would be “the country’s and the people’s enemies,” Changanjian said.
Wu’s voice is “completely out of line with the country’s policymakers,” and the private sector is strictly protected by Chinese Constitution, Zhu Boshan, general manager of Shanghai Tacter Investment Consulting, told the Global Times on Tuesday.
Such backward thoughts would hurt Chinese entrepreneurial confidence and provoked reactionary ideas against reform and opening-up, Huang Weiping, an economics professor of Renmin University of China, told the Global Times.
The People’s Daily said in an editorial on Thursday that the private economy will “only be enlarged, not quit the stage.”
The private sector now contributes more than 60 percent of China’s GDP growth and brings in over half of China’s fiscal revenue, according to Gao Yunlong, head of the AllChina Federation of Industry and Commerce, Xinhua News Agency reported in March.
More than 60 percent of China’s fixed-asset investment and outbound investment was made by private investors, Gao told a press conference on the sidelines of the first session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, Xinhua reported.