Op-Ed Contributors

On road to a balanced society

By Li Peilin (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-02-21 07:35

China has to take measures to raise its social management to the level of its economic and political development

China has seen rapid economic development and political stability over the past three decades, but with them have come a variety of social contradictions. Compared to China's fast and profound economic and social changes, its social management system has been tardy, and that among other things, is the leading cause of the social problems.

The profound changes that have taken place in China's long-established social structure call for suitable innovations in its social management system. The ever-deepening reform and opening-up, together with the continuous development of the socialist market economy, has accelerated China's development into a diversified society - in economic composition, organization and employment, and in the pattern of interests and income distribution. These changes have created huge challenges for the country's existing social management system.

The country has taken giant strides toward economic and social development. This has expedited its transformation from the previous class structure of workers, farmers, cadres and intellectuals to a more complicated one that comprises more classes and groups. To find the best way to handle and coordinate the interests of all classes and groups in today's changed and pluralistic society and form a vigorous and harmonious social order remains the top priority for the country's social managers.

The high rate of urbanization has prompted an increasing number of farmers to move from rural to urban areas. This too poses a major challenge to the government, which has to decide whether such a big army of rural laborers can be integrated into an alien urban neighborhood where they work and live.

Despite its rapid economic development over the past three decades, China's Gini coefficient, which measures the wealth gap between the rich and the poor, has kept rising and the income gap between its urban and rural areas and among different regions and groups has been widening. The uneven income distribution is an important cause of public grievance.

Under such circumstances, a key but thorny issue for the government is to find how it can change the income distribution pattern, reverse the widening income gap and set up a reasonable income distribution model to maintain social harmony and stability. The decades-long family planning policy in urban areas, along with a free flow of the population, has aggravated some social problems and poses a new challenge for China's slow-progressing social management system. The country's aging society complicates this problem further.