A brief review of China's industrialization: a world miracle has been created in decades

Although industrialization has a history of only two or three hundred years, the material wealth created is much greater than that of previous eras combined. China's achievements in industrialization are even more amazing to the world: in just a few decades, it has built an industrial system with a complete system and huge production capacity, become the world's largest manufacturing country and second largest economy, and successfully explored a new industrialization path that meets China's national conditions.

Since the founding of New China, the party has led the people of the whole country to follow the inherent law of industrialization, combined with the basic national conditions and the background of the times, and through unremitting exploration, completed the industrialization process of developed countries for hundreds of years in just a few decades, embarked on a path of socialist industrialization with Chinese characteristics, and created a "Chinese miracle" of economic development.

The report of the Seventh National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 1945 pointed out that the task of the Chinese working class was not only to struggle for the establishment of a new-democratic state, but also for China's industrialization and agricultural modernization. Later, the "First Five-Year Plan" proposed to concentrate the main forces on the development of heavy industry and not relax agriculture and light industry. In September 1954, Comrade Mao Zedong announced that he was ready to build, within a few five-year plans, a country as backward as we are now economically and culturally, into an industrialized and great country with a high degree of modern education.

In December 1964, comrade Zhou Enlai proposed in his "Government Work Report" at the first session of the Third National People's Congress that the mainland should be built into a socialist power with modern agriculture, modern industry, modern national defense, and modern science and technology, and put forward a two-step idea: First, establish an independent and relatively complete industrial system and national economic system; and second, comprehensively realize the modernization of agriculture, industry, national defense, and science and technology, so that the mainland economy will walk in the forefront of the world.

At the beginning of reform and opening up, Comrade Deng Xiaoping proposed, "Our goal is to realize the four modernizations by the end of this century. On March 30, 1979, Deng Xiaoping pointed out that in order for China to achieve four modernizations, there are at least two important characteristics that must be seen: one is that the foundation is thin; the second is that the population is large and the arable land is small. Without a holistic approach, we will face a social problem of underemployment for a long time. On April 30, 1987, Deng Xiaoping pointed out that it is necessary to solve the problem of poverty of one billion people and the development of one billion people. "China can only rely on socialism, not capitalism, for modernization."

The Thirteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 1987 pointed out that after the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the strategic deployment of the mainland's economic construction was divided into "three steps": The first step was to double the gross national product compared with 1980 and solve the problem of food and clothing for the people. The second step, by the end of the 20th century, is to double the gross national product and achieve a well-off level of people's living standards. Third, by the middle of the 21 st century, the per capita gross national product will reach the level of a moderately developed country and modernization will be basically realized. This not only clarifies the phased goal of achieving modernization, but also takes the people's personally felt living standards (food and clothing - well-off - prosperity) as the stage of development of modernization.

The Sixteenth National Congress proposed to persist in using informatization to promote industrialization and industrialization to promote informatization, so as to realize a new type of industrialization path with high scientific and technological content, good economic benefits, low resource consumption, less environmental pollution, and full play of human resource advantages. With high scientific and technological content, it is necessary to give play to the role of science and technology as the primary productive force and improve product quality and competitiveness. Good economic returns mean that we should shift from mainly relying on increasing input, paving the stalls, and pursuing quantitative growth to the track centered on economic efficiency, and realize the transformation of the growth mode from extensive to intensive. The low consumption of resources requires adhering to the simultaneous development of resources and savings, putting conservation in the first place, and striving to improve the efficiency of resource utilization. There is less environmental pollution, which requires paying attention to the prevention and control of environmental pollution and ecological damage from the source, and avoiding the old road of "pollution first and then treatment" of traditional industrialization. To give full play to the advantages of human resources, it is necessary to properly handle the relationship between the technology-intensive industries and labor-intensive industries of development funds, enhance the ability of the labor force through education and training, and achieve sustainable economic and social development.

Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping as the core has made a series of major decisions and deployments to accelerate the promotion of new industrialization with a global vision and strategic vision. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that a country must have the correct strategic choice, the mainland is a big country, it must develop the real economy, continuously promote industrial modernization, improve the level of manufacturing, and cannot be separated from the real to the virtual. The mainland has firmly grasped the historical opportunities of trade and investment liberalization, technological progress and industrial transfer under the background of economic globalization, vigorously promoted economic restructuring, transformation and upgrading, and built itself into the only country in the world with all the industrial categories in the United Nations Industrial Classification, ranking first in the world in the output of more than 220 kinds of industrial products, including automobiles and computers, realizing the transformation of the industrial economy to high-quality development, and successfully entering the ranks of middle- and high-income countries.

In 2017, the Nineteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China drew a blueprint for socialist modernization with two stage goals, from 2020 to 2035, basically realizing socialist modernization; by the middle of this century, building a prosperous, strong, democratic, civilized, harmonious and beautiful socialist modern power. Accelerating the construction of an industrial system with coordinated development of the real economy, scientific and technological innovation, modern finance, and human resources is the core content of building a modern economic system. With the start of a new journey of comprehensively building a modern socialist country in 2020, the mainland will move from basically realizing industrialization to fully realizing industrialization. In 2030, the mainland's per capita GDP, tertiary industrial structure, manufacturing share, population urbanization rate, non-agricultural employment and other indicators will be in the post-industrial stage. According to the "Made in China 2025" plan, by 2035, the manufacturing industry as a whole will reach the middle level of the world's manufacturing powers.

On July 1, 2021, Comrade Xi Jinping announced at the meeting to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, "Through the continuous struggle of the whole party and the people of all ethnic groups in the country, we have achieved the first centenary goal, comprehensively built a moderately prosperous society on the land of China, historically solved the problem of absolute poverty, and are moving towards the second centenary goal of comprehensively building a socialist modern power." "Building China into an industrialized country is a dream that many people with lofty ideals have wanted to achieve but have not realized in modern times, and this dream under the leadership of the Communist Party of China will surely become a reality."