Article/Jia Kang of China Economic 50 People Forum
The rule of law enables social members to seek the balance of interests of the "greatest common divisor" through the way of minimizing the social cost, and after the greatest common divisor comes out, what can be obtained is sustainable multiple rounds of dynamic optimization under the protection of the rule of law to achieve inclusive development in China.
The realization of China's inclusive development needs the protection of the rule of law Hello, everyone! Starting from several books, I will briefly talk about my understanding of the road to national success. In these books, I focus on "Why the State Fails". In addition to this book, there is "The Fog of Economic Growth" - the subtitle indicates that the discussion is about the success or failure of development policies in the process of economic growth (defined as, actually reflected in the increase of per capita income). The success or failure of the country and the success or failure of the policy, whether there is regularity behind it, is something that we need to know and reveal in particular. From this perspective, I will talk about the understanding framework very briefly.
I noticed that after the Chinese version of Why the State Fails, there was a relatively extensive introduction. For example, the introduction materials left at that time specifically emphasized the importance of the system in the process of national development in striving for success and avoiding failure. The most important mission of the system is to deal with the problem of how to protect property rights from the cornerstone level of the operation of the market economy to how to comprehensively legalize.
The source of the basic theory mentioned in the book is the cognitive framework of North, the representative figure of institutional economics, followed by a sentence: "From the perspective of North's theory itself, beauty is beauty, and the end is beauty". In real life, the framework of institutional economics corresponds to transition economics in China and other economies, as well as the role of institutional supply factors among the five supply side factors we are discussing in the new supply economics. Obviously, in the face of the task of discussion, people with lofty ideals from all walks of life need to deepen together to further form an understanding that can respond to practical challenges.
In this regard, I would like to pay special attention to the expert Asimoglu, one of the authors of the book, who has a special understanding of this aspect and has written a special article on China's future economic growth from the perspective of the system. After I read it, I thought his finishing touch was to say something like this near the end of the full text: "Without social and political transformation, China's economic growth cannot be sustained", emphasizing the need to combine society and politics with the economy to seek consensus. He said that "catch-up growth is undoubtedly very important for China. China has also been very successful at this stage ", referring to the take-off process of reform and opening up, the extraordinary high-speed growth process, but then turned to the next conversation:" catch-up growth depends on technology transfer, outsourcing production, etc. "(this is our advantage as a latecomer) "But the adoption and improvement of this technology will not work until wages start to rise, and China's wage level has begun to rise" - this is what we have highlighted in our supply side research in recent years, The comparative advantage of low labor force that once supported us is rapidly disappearing. Now China is generally faced with "shortage of migrant workers", "difficult recruitment, expensive employment", followed by the rapid rise of land resources development costs in expanding cities and towns and industrial and mining built-up areas, and now the capital is abundant, but the marginal return on conventional capital investment is decreasing, I feel that the supply and demand are becoming more and more incompatible.
The author emphasizes that with "the adoption and improvement of this technology, it will not work until wages start to increase, and China's wage level has begun to rise. With China's integration into the world economy, the potential of the existing growth mode will be exhausted", that is, following the old path, the supporting factors of what we call growth momentum will be exhausted. At this time, "only through technological innovation can we achieve sustainable growth" (which also involves total factor productivity), "and innovation requires the reform of those broad social and political systems I mentioned earlier", which is his finishing touch.
I think, from this perspective, it is necessary to have a grasp of the cognitive framework formed by the book Why the State Fails to deal with complex problems concisely. Read this book, what is the concise cognitive framework it gives? namely No matter how different economies and countries are, the most basic thing is that they can be divided into two types of growth: one is based on inclusive institutional arrangements, and the other is based on the opposite non inclusive institutional arrangements. In my opinion, it directly focuses on the "inclusive development" that can now be refined into the frontier concept of human civilization development. In fact, during Hu Jintao's tenure as General Secretary, we have accepted this concept from China's decision-making level to all aspects of society. Now we are going to take the road of inclusive development. This is very rich in content, which is worth discussing.
Since we emphasize inclusiveness, we emphasize win-win results, which corresponds to the "sharing economy" in the era of big data, cloud computing and mobile Internet in the process of supply side innovation. In the internal logic of the behavior of each economic entity, the objective development trend is to approach the "sharing economy". In terms of the whole society, this "win-win" process, of course, provides China with unprecedented historical development opportunities. What we should strive for is peaceful development and peaceful rise, and realize the "Chinese Dream" of national rejuvenation in this extraordinary development, which is to return to the first camp of the world.
In this process, General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized the development of China and other economies, and logically, "the development of a community with a shared future for mankind". From the sharing economy launched by the supply side innovation to the development of the community of shared future identified at the whole strategic level, the internal laws and the core concept formed now are the so-called inclusive development. Inclusive development must have inclusive institutional arrangements, so that we can follow the objective laws in this direction to promote the modernization process. Under such a cognitive framework, specific analysis should be further extended to the discussion points of "how to do" from some controversial aspects.
Now I notice that although everyone has accepted the concept of inclusive development, there are obviously different ideas about how to take the road of development in China's ideological circles and related aspects. No matter how reflective and forward-looking they are, there are obviously conflicts of different ideas. There is no need to say more. Looking at the most active information source in China in the past six months, the WeChat circle, as well as microblog and blog articles that more directly vent their emotions, including traditional media information, it is obvious that there are different orientations behind various disputes. How to find and form consensus that can connect with the practice process as far as possible is the key point I want to talk about. To put it simply, inspired by Why the Country Fails and several other books, I am looking for an inclusive development path that can be followed. The latest concept formed now is The institutional arrangement should be a set of feasible systems that "put power and humanity in the cage of the rule of law in the republic".
"Put power in a cage" is the original words of the General Secretary, and everyone agrees. To expand a little, this "power" first talks about public power. Behind the public power in the hands of the government, the power and right system of the whole society is more extensive. Those who hold power and rights are all human beings, and there must be human nature that must be further understood.
The generalization of human nature in economics is known in the past as the hypothesis of economic man, which will be followed by the concept of political man that has to be discussed. There are more rich discussions on different aspects. Power and humanity need to be discussed together. I think we should consider putting them in the cage of a republic under the rule of law. This is a question that must be further discussed starting from the words of General Secretary Xi Jinping.
Of course, if we can reach the following level, we can achieve inclusive development based on civil rights and oriented by self love and fraternity. In such inclusiveness, it is necessary to deal with the issues that have been debated for many years, such as what is freedom and democracy, and how to deal with fraternity. If it is incorporated into the institutional arrangement framework of the rule of law, the freedom and democracy we advocate can be reasonably guaranteed and necessary restricted.
After seeing many knotty things, let's expand a little and talk about "freedom". I noticed that when the Communist Party developed as a revolutionary party, the most inspiring thing was that the "God of Freedom was singing with abandon" in the Yanhe Ode during the Yan'an period. At that time, Yan'an's low material security conditions attracted so many people: hundreds of thousands of young people all over China with progressive ideas, regardless of material conditions, many people from rich families want to go to Yan'an. What do they pursue? Freedom.
When this freedom comes to Pei Duofei, it is "life is precious, love is more expensive; if it is freedom, both can be thrown away", which has pushed it to such a supreme height. The "original intention" of Marxism is the communist lofty ideal of "the union of free people". After so many years when the Communist Party became the ruling party as a revolutionary party, was it free? When you say freedom, you should also avoid "liberalization". In terms of ideological tendency, you are talking about "neo liberalism" in the field of economics. It is no longer a dispute between schools, but a derogatory term. This is a real tangle.
I don't think we can go to extremes. From the perspective of academic reason, any freedom can't be unlimited, but it is against the most deep-rooted nature of human beings to regard freedom as something that needs to be suppressed. There must be commonness in human nature. I don't deny that there are differences in human nature. Some people are willing to emphasize the class nature, but I think the analysis tool of class nature is easy to fall into the labeling and expansion error here, so we can say commonness and individuality.
The common feature of seeking freedom in human nature is that "people share the same heart and reason". The problem is how to get necessary guarantees and reasonable constraints. Only the framework of the rule of law can deal with such contradictions, and can sublimate to the institutional arrangement of inclusive development of the whole society, to gradually strive for a highly civilized state close to the "union of free people".
It is also about discussing democracy. What kind of entanglement is there? We have seen so many ideological documents discussing democracy. One extreme can elevate him to the sky, and the other extreme will inevitably lead to tragedy. How many evils are carried out in the name of democracy and should be trampled underfoot. In real life, we can see that from ancient Greece to China, the name of democracy has brought a lot of human tears, disasters and painful social costs.
In ancient Greece, when discussing democracy, in fact, first of all, "democracy" is a derogatory word, and "republic" is a commendatory and true meaning. After the Revolution of 1911, when we expressed "going to the republic", we had formed the overlap of the commonalities of democracy and the republic. For example, when we discussed the name of a country in 1949, we first mentioned "the People's Democratic Republic of China". Later, experts said that "the Republic" already contains the meaning of "democracy", so we don't need to list it specifically, so we can simply call it "the People's Republic of China".
I think it should be understood that way, Democracy is an essential part, but not the whole, of a republic. Democracy must be subject to certain restrictions and mediation. The so-called United States is a democratic system. The real situation is not direct democracy, but representative democracy. Why does everyone think of one person, one vote when they talk about Western democracy? This is also an obvious misunderstanding. The democracy of "one person, one vote" is very easy to fall into the state of "tyranny of the majority". In my opinion, after a rigorous discussion of these issues by scholars, we should return to the framework of Why the State Fails, which gives us the enlightenment that the real problem is not the freedom and democracy that is ostensibly respected by people, the real problem and the key problem are the rule of law and the common language in the world is "constitutional republic". In the specific context of China, the word "constitutionalism" is also easy to cause controversy and trouble. According to the true meaning, it can be said as "a republic under the rule of law", without substantive contradictions.
When it comes to the rule of law, of course The rule of law enables social members to seek the balance of interests of the "greatest common divisor" through the way of minimizing the social cost, and after the greatest common divisor comes out, what can be obtained is sustainable multiple rounds of dynamic optimization under the protection of the rule of law to achieve inclusive development in China. In the process of discussion after the reform and opening up, China has approached this basic understanding in terms of guiding ideology and core concepts. At the Third Plenary Session of the CPC Central Committee, I think the most brilliant refinement is "the modernization of the national governance system and capacity". The concept of "governance" replaces the concept of "management", which emphasizes that such an operating mechanism should no longer be viewed as a simple top-down control by governments at all levels, but that multiple subjects should be expanded in more planes, fully interact, and integrate management and self-management, organization and self-organization, regulation and self-regulation, Such a set of institutional arrangements and mechanisms for inclusive development have been formed. The word "governance" is to seek such an upgraded development. We should firmly grasp the spirit of the Third Plenary Session of the CPC Central Committee, grasp the practical problems to be solved in the future, meet challenges, and solve all kinds of entanglements and difficulties encountered now.
Therefore, if we can introduce more clear and operational views and opinions on inclusive development through more rational discussions, I think it is during and after such discussions that we can further promote valuable and constructive research paths for actual life. Let me start with this speech, thank you!
(Author Speech at Moganshan Nighttalk Symposium of 2016 New Moganshan Conference)
(The author of this article introduces: Director of the Institute of Financial Science, Ministry of Finance, researcher, doctoral supervisor.)
