China's 2020 Blueprint to Ripple Through World

Ambition & challenges

The CPC has no intention of checking the country's economic ambitions. It will continue to view economic development as a major job.

At the previous Party congress in 2007, the target of quadrupling the per capita GDP of the year 2000 by 2020 was set. At the ongoing congress, the Party announced that it aims to double the 2010 GDP and per capita income for both urban and rural residents by 2020.

Delegate Zhang Yuyan, chief of the Institute of World Economics and Politics under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said the 2020 blueprint shows the Party's down-to-earth spirit and principle of doing its own job well.

Managing to improve people's living standards when China's productivity is low is a test facing the Party, he said.

China ranked 77th out of 213 economies in 2011 with a per capita gross national income of US$4,940, according to World Bank data. The global average was US$9,491 last year.

Over the past 30 years, China has reduced its poor population from 250 million to 26.88 million, becoming the first country to fulfill the United Nation's millennium goal of cutting the destitute population by half.

Last year, the Chinese government raised the country's poverty threshold to 2,300 yuan, which increased the country's poor population to 100 million.

"I see no chance for China to be a challenger of the global order after 2020. But with rising national strength, it can be more extensively integrated into the changing international community. It can contribute more to the world economy and boost the reform of existing international order to better protect the need of emerging economies," said Zhang.

If China succeeds in economic restructuring by relying more on domestic consumption and technological advancement, the rebalancing of world economy will be a less arduous task, he said.

With labor cost rising, China cannot rest on its past glory as the world's "manufacturing plant." It should fuel its comparative advantages across the global value chain through higher productivity.

Higher productivity and efficiency can also check China's energy and resources consumption, easing the pressure on environment left by an expanding world economy, Zhang said.

By 2020, the country's carbon dioxide emission per unit of gross domestic product will drop by 40 percent to 50 percent from the 2005 level.

"From the blueprint outlined in the report delivered by Hu Jintao at the congress, people can see the perseverance of the CPC in pressing ahead with reforms to achieve the goal," said Zhang.

William Ratliff, a fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, said China's incoming leadership needs to recall Deng Xiaoping's pragmatism to clarify conditions today that even Deng could not have fully imagined. They must also dictate new reforms to deal with those conditions.

He said that would mean a broad restructuring of China's political and economic ideas and institutions. It will need to liberate people's minds to innovate, and expand options for policies dealing with whatever proves to be the domestic and global challenges of the future.

If commands from the Party leaders decrease and a broader cross-section of individuals and groups are consulted in analyzing, formulating and implementing policies, those challenges will be met more productively, he said.

China watcher Robert Kuhn from the United States said China must stage sustainable reform across a abroad spectrum. Too rapid reform will cause disruption, he said.

"Times of great change can be very unsettling and no one in China or the world would benefit from the country returning to chaos," said William Ratliff.

He said domestic liberation and increasingly constructive involvement in global political and economic affairs will enhance China's relations with the world.

What may bring incoming Chinese leaders credit from the world involves a demonstration of sound environmental practices, the universality of such essentially Confucian ideas as harmonious existence, group orientation, public-spiritedness and distributive justice, he noted.