Interview | Why does Chinese modernization emphasize common prosperity for all?
What is China's philosophy of wealth creation?
The modernization of Western countries is not one for China to emulate. Chinese modernization emphasizes common prosperity for all, aiming to enable the majority of the population to achieve a moderately affluent standard of living.
The way to govern a country is to enrich the people first. For thousands of years, the Chinese nation has always maintained a beautiful expectation of common prosperity for all.
So, why does Chinese modernization emphasize common prosperity for all? Looking back at the history of Chinese civilization, what historical and cultural roots underlie the concept of "common prosperity for all"? Since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, what significant measures has China taken to address poverty?
DeepChina: In the process of Western modernization, why do some countries experience "poverty" as a result of racial and class factors? What is China's philosophy of wealth creation?
Wen Tiejun: In the West, the first group to fall into poverty and despair were the indigenous peoples. Whether in the United States or Canada, indigenous peoples not only suffered from a sharp decline in population but the surviving populations were largely confined to reservations, which were typically located in relatively barren areas. For example, the Native American Indians in the United States live in the desert regions of Arizona, making it difficult for them to share in the benefits of modernization with the colonizers.
The second major group consists of those who were enslaved and sold in large numbers to these colonies during the Triangular Trade. Their descendants mostly remain in a state of poverty. To this day, the racial issue still plagues the United States.
In the West, social polarization and class stratification due to excessive wealth disparity are severe. In some countries, social development has stagnated, become fragmented, or even turbulent, leading the entire economic cycle into a state of low-efficiency equilibrium.
Therefore, the modernization of Western countries is not one for us to emulate. Chinese modernization emphasizes common prosperity for all, aiming to break free from this low-efficiency equilibrium and enable the majority of the population to achieve a moderately affluent standard of living. Ordinary people can change their destinies through their own efforts, and intergenerational social mobility remains relatively fluid. In this state, the cycle of production, distribution, circulation, and consumption will operate more smoothly, making the economic system more efficient, dynamic, and healthy.
DeepChina: Looking back at the thousands of years of Chinese civilization, what historical and cultural roots underlie the concept of "common prosperity for all"?
Wen Tiejun: The agricultural way of life marked the Chinese nation's entry into civilization. Wild millet was domesticated in the north 9,800 years ago, and wild rice was domesticated in the south 10,000 years ago. Around this period, ancient Chinese ancestors began using simple tools for farming, transitioning from the Paleolithic Age to the Neolithic Age, and later gradually advancing to the Bronze and Iron Ages.
With the evolution of production tools, people continuously improved their ability to rely on agriculture for survival. For example, water management, which is crucial for agricultural production, when faced with uneven rainfall, drainage is needed during heavy rains, and irrigation is required during droughts. Accomplishing such complex tasks inevitably requires collective effort. Thus, a communal way of life gradually emerged.
With this communal way of life forming the basis of villages, an important endogenous culture emerged and has been continuously passed down throughout Chinese history: a village cannot exclude any farming household living within it; similarly, a farming household cannot exclude any of its family members. In this way, the village community, with farming households as its member units, and the households, with individual family members as their units, form a tightly-knit relationship of coexistence, mutual dependence, and shared benefits, extending from the village to the households and down to the individuals.
Why is the West different? The water management conditions in the West are much better than ours. Europe experiences seasonal and relatively abundant rainfall, unlike China, where the three-tiered geographical distribution leads to significant regional variations in precipitation. As a result, people in European countries could survive relying on natural conditions, meaning they could sustain their basic livelihoods entirely through individual or single-household efforts. The need for
"collectivity" was not prominent, and thus, the emphasis on sharing was also minimal.
Later, around 4,000 years ago, significant climate cooling covered the northern regions in ice and snow. Nomadic groups from the northern grasslands migrated southward in large numbers. Among them, a group with horse-drawn chariots, the Aryans, moved south and eventually formed what is known today as Greece.
Westerners regard Greek civilization as their early civilization, referring to the civilization formed by the southward migration of the Aryans. This ethnic group was not skilled in farming but excelled in warfare. They established city-states along the coastal areas of the Peloponnese Peninsula in Greece, enslaving 90% of the indigenous population.
From this, it is evident that the state formed based on Chinese civilization has never been war-oriented but rather characterized by unity, mutual assistance, and coexistence. This stands in contrast to the West.
DeepChina: After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, in order to overcome the impoverished and underdeveloped social conditions, China formulated and implemented a series of poverty reduction policies, particularly targeting ethnic regions, and achieved remarkable success. What historical and practical factors were these policies based on?
Wen Tiejun: China is a unified multi-ethnic country with a socialist system, so ensuring that no ethnic group is left behind in the modernization process has become an inherent part of "common prosperity for all." Whether it is the nationwide paired assistance mechanism for Xizang and Xinjiang, which China has upheld for over 30 years, or the paired poverty alleviation collaboration between the eastern and western regions, these are all successful practices of China's ethnic policies. Examples include building a school road specifically for dozens of Yi children deep in the Daliang Mountains or constructing the Dulongjiang Highway for over 7,000 Dulong people in Nujiang, Yunnan. These are typical cases of such efforts.
In 1935, Chinese human geographer Hu Huanyong drew a demarcation line stretching from Heihe in the northeast to Tengchong in the southwest, which is known in academia as the "Hu Line."
To the southeast of the Hu Huanyong Line lies a developed agricultural region with extensive irrigation systems, where transportation and urban centers flourished, and industries such as textiles and ceramics thrived, nurturing and sustaining a large population. To the northwest, however, severe land desertification caused by drought, poor transportation, sparse urban development, low-yield agriculture, and weather-dependent pastoralism resulted in slow population growth. This latter region is where most of China's ethnic minority populations reside.
Historically, the agricultural reclamation efforts by Chinese dynasties in the northwest had a limited impact on economic development. Traditional societies of ethnic minorities were largely isolated, with vast natural resources remaining untapped. As a result, the development gap between the southeast and northwest became increasingly pronounced, a situation that persisted even as China entered the threshold of modern history.
Addressing the challenges posed by the "Hu Line" has been a consistent effort of the Communist Party of China since the founding of the People's Republic of China. For a vast country like China, with a large population and diverse ethnic groups, breaking this pattern requires comprehensive planning and leveraging the advantages of the "whole-nation system." This ensures that people in the central and western regions do not have to leave their hometowns but can share in modernization right at their doorsteps, transforming their homelands into modernized areas.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the implementation of the regional ethnic autonomy system laid the initial groundwork for mutual assistance and cooperative development among ethnic groups. In the country's first Five-Year Plan for national economic development, specific guidelines were established for ethnic regions, outlining development goals focused on agriculture, animal husbandry, trade, and transportation.
In the late 1970s, particularly after the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, support and assistance for the economic development of ethnic regions entered a new phase. For example, in 1977, the state established a subsidy for border area construction, and in 1979, the National Border Defense Work Conference proposed a policy of "paired assistance," where relatively developed eastern provinces and cities would support ethnic regions in the west. These policies and measures aimed to narrow the development gap between regions and ethnic groups, achieving common prosperity for all.
Notably, the Border Area Construction Project launched in 1999, the National Outline for Prosperous Border Areas Action Plan (2001–2010), and the Development Plan for Ethnic Groups with Smaller Populations (2005–2010) were all designed to help ethnic communities escape poverty and achieve prosperity through targeted policies.
Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2012, China has achieved a historic poverty reduction miracle through the "Targeted Poverty Alleviation" policy. Under current standards, all 98.99 million rural poor have been lifted out of poverty, marking China's historic farewell to absolute poverty.
DeepChina: The economic base determines the superstructure, and development is the key to solving various issues in China's ethnic regions. What kind of development path is China pursuing today?
Wen Tiejun: For a unified multi-ethnic country, or the Chinese nation as a diverse yet integrated family, poverty eradication and common prosperity for all are the cornerstones of maintaining unity and consolidating integration. Tailored measures and differentiated support are the conditions and processes for achieving unity and fostering cohesion.
Today, when we talk about "common prosperity for all," it represents a higher level of development. Unlike the West, which achieved industrialization at the cost of environmental destruction and resource exploitation under capital control, China's economic development emphasizes harmony between humans and nature. It must align with the geographical resources, climatic conditions, and resource endowments of ethnic regions.
At the same time, unlike the severe tendency in Western modernization to prioritize material wealth over spiritual values and individualism over collectivism, China's development does not treat money as the absolute guiding principle. Instead, it demands not only the "comprehensive enrichment of material wealth" but also the "all-round development of people," placing greater emphasis on the role of the humanistic spirit in nurturing and uniting society.
The views don't necessarily reflect those of DeepChina.
The interviewee is Wen Tiejun, Executive Dean of the Institute of Rural Reconstruction of China at Southwest University and Chief Researcher at the Institute of Rural Revitalization of Jinan University
Interviewed by Liu Xian
Translator/ Zhang Rong
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