HK needs to attune to nation's new era

Successful progress brings a profound change in direction for the Party toward a more equal, green and high-tech society; the city needs to take note, Lau Nai-keung writes

Western prejudices are pathetic to the point of being counter-productive and even dangerous. When the Communist Party of China's General Secretary Xi Jinping announced an important change in Party philosophy, referred to officially as "Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era", digital news outlet Quartz dismissed it as "a well-worn phrase" with "a few extra words on it".

Little do these petty Western journalists know, the new philosophy is profound. As Soviet Union founder Vladimir Lenin insisted in What is to be Done?, "Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement." As faithful students of Marx and Lenin, the practice of the CPC has always been theoretically grounded.

But of course the CPC's theory is not abstract; it is in turn grounded in reality, or more precisely (and this distinction is crucial), in the process of changing the reality. It looks into what worked and what didn't, summarizes the results and then theorizes. Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era is therefore at the same time a practical theory and a theory of practice. Unlike other social philosophies and theories that tend to objectify, naturalize and justify the status quo, this dialectical understanding of the relationship between theory and practice makes it truly and uniquely progressive, that is able to bring about changes.

In declaring that "the principal contradiction" facing China's socialist society has evolved from "the ever-growing material and cultural needs of the people and backward social production" to "unbalanced and inadequate development and the people's ever-growing needs for a better life," Xi has updated the problem China is facing.

And how we needed that update. The previous formulation was announced in the 11th Party Congress in 1981. That was a time of general material shortage, although things had started to improve - with food stamps beginning to be phased out (the process would continue till 1993).

Based on that understanding, China has prioritized material production in the past 30 years, leading to a mindset critics have labeled as "GDPism". But the result was remarkable. Over the 36 years where "the ever-growing material and cultural needs of the people and backward social production" was diagnosed as "the principal contradiction", China has rebuilt itself as an industrial powerhouse. The times of general underproduction are now well behind us. Instead, we arguably have entered the age of overproduction for a number of years already. The pitfall of GDPism is well known. Before the update of the "principal contradiction" gradual reforms were already underway. In the past decade, the CPC and the Chinese government have already started to rectify many of them, including environmental protection and social protection. Those who doubt the effectiveness or sincerity of these rectifications can just reflect on how remote we now are from the era when China was perceived as one giant "sweatshop".

The latest reform along the same logic is "supply-side reform", based on the realization that China now faces overproduction of primarily low-tech and low-quality products but at the same time underproduction of many high-tech and high-quality products. To raise the Chinese people's standard of living to the next level without draining the entire planet's resources, China needs both a productivity boost, which requires technological innovation, and a redirection of production efforts.

The update of the "principal contradiction" to "unbalanced and inadequate development and the people's ever-growing needs for a better life" is a theorization of all the previous reforms and guidance for all future policies. Based on this, Xi announced that the party will first lead China to "basically realize socialist modernization" by 2035, when, among other things, the nation will have narrowed its wealth gap and improved its environment significantly. And then, from 2035-50, the party will help make China into a leading global power and the Chinese people will enjoy plentiful "common prosperity".

After three decades of a single-minded pursuit of economic growth, it is obvious the Party plans for a more balanced and sustainable development, in which income equality and environmental protection will be priorities.

Hong Kong has benefited much in the previous phase of national development. In particular, our status as entrepot was an integral part of China's then export-oriented economy, which led to the China miracle of continuous double-digit growth. The future of our city's prosperity will, again, depend on whether or not we can make ourselves relevant to the latest development of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

(HK Edition 10/24/2017 page9)