Zhang Yunfei
He is a full-time researcher at the National Institute of Development and Strategic Studies, Chinese University, and a professor at the School of Marxism
summary
As an insurmountable stage of social development, modernization first occurred and was completed in Western society. However, Western modernization, with the pursuit of surplus value as the axis of value, is actually a kind of "partial" modernization. In contrast, Chinese-style modernization emphasizes the comprehensive improvement of material, political, spiritual, social, and ecological civilizations, the comprehensive prosperity and progress of society, and the all-round development of people, which is a comprehensive modernization.
When we are moving toward the goal of the second centenary struggle, only by comprehensively grasping the rich connotation and value orientation of modernization can we smoothly achieve the goal of comprehensively building a modern socialist country.
The historical exploration of modernization with the pursuit of all-round development
As an insurmountable stage of social development, modernization first occurred and was completed in Western society. But because of the pursuit of surplus value as the axis of value, Western modernization became a kind of "partial" modernization. After the war, under the influence of the mechanical development concept, the newly independent nation-states generally repeated the mistakes of one-sided development when they launched their own modernization. In this regard, the French scholar François Peru put forward the "holistic", "comprehensive" and "endogenous" concept of development in the book "New View of Development". This is an important transformation of the theory and model of modernization.
In the critical logic of capital, Marx and Engels put forward the concept of "social organism" and systematically elucidated the ideas of comprehensive social progress and all-round human development. In the process of promoting socialist modernization, countries such as the Soviet Union and China, which take Marxism as the guiding ideology, have attached greater importance to the comprehensiveness of development. In 1964, China formally established the "four modernization" goals covering agriculture, industry, national defense, and science and technology. Since the beginning of reform and opening up, our party has regarded all-round development and all-round progress as an inherent stipulation and basic requirement for building a socialist society and advancing the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics. Especially since the Eighteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping as the core has continuously enriched and improved the connotation and requirements of modernization. According to the overall layout of "five-in-one", modernization construction must achieve comprehensive improvement in economic construction, political construction, cultural construction, social construction, and ecological civilization construction. In accordance with the "four comprehensive" strategic layout, a new journey of comprehensively building a modern socialist country has begun, and looking forward to 2035, China's economic strength, scientific and technological strength, and comprehensive national strength will leap forward significantly, the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity will be basically realized, the people's lives will be better, and the all-round development of people and the common prosperity of all people will make more obvious substantive progress. In accordance with the "two-step" strategy formulated by the Nineteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, by the middle of this century, we must build our country into a prosperous, strong, democratic, civilized, harmonious, and beautiful socialist modern power. In general, China's modernization is the modernization of material, political, spiritual, social, ecological civilization and all-round human development.
Economic modernization oriented by material civilization
In the economic field, we must promote economic modernization through the modernization of economic governance, strive to build our country into a rich and strong modern power, and create a highly developed socialist material civilization.
From the 1760s onwards, Britain took the lead in initiating the historical process of industrialization, transforming from an agrarian society to an industrial society. Industrialization is the foundation and core of modernization. In order to adapt to the development of industrialization, Western society launched marketization and realized the transformation from a natural economy to a commodity economy. Marketization is the appropriate system to promote industrialization. That is to say, industrialization and marketization together constitute the main content of economic modernization.
China's modernization has different environments and conditions from Western modernization, and China must embark on a path of modernization that suits itself.
In terms of economic development, Western society has completed the tasks of industrialization and urbanization on the basis of agricultural industrialization and entered the information age. In the face of the development gap between China and the West and the lesson of "pollution first and then treatment" in Western modernization, China must achieve leapfrog development under the premise of adhering to the path of socialist industrialization, promote industrialization with informatization, and drive informatization with industrialization, and embark on a new industrialization road with high scientific and technological content, good economic benefits, low resource consumption, less environmental pollution, guaranteed safety conditions, and full play of human resource advantages, and coordinate to promote new industrialization, informatization, urbanization, agricultural modernization and greening. Catch up with Western modernization in a sustainable way.
In terms of economic governance, Western society has established a relatively perfect market economic system, which has promoted the optimal allocation of resources. However, it cannot be ignored that there is a risk of market economy failure, so China needs to continuously deepen the reform of the economic system and establish and improve the socialist market economic system. At present, through the organic combination of efficient markets and promising governments, we have explored the formation of a new national system. It is precisely thanks to the advantages of this system that we have successfully achieved a comprehensive victory in the battle against poverty and the strategic results of the prevention and control of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, and have advanced the historical process of modernization. Of course, in the field of competition, it is necessary to give full play to the decisive role of the market mechanism and avoid interference and interference by administrative forces in the order of fair competition.
Gross domestic product (GDP) and gross national product (GNP), GDP per capita and GNP per capita are important indicators of economic modernization. In the future, we must devote ourselves to raising the total level and per capita level of China's wealth, make overall plans to make the country strong and prosperous, and truly realize the goal of hiding wealth for the people.
Political modernization oriented toward political civilization
In the political field, we must promote political modernization through the modernization of political governance, strive to build our country into a democratic modern power, and create a highly developed socialist political civilization.
In 1789, the people of Paris captured the Bastille, a bourgeois political revolution broke out, and France began the process of modernization. Furthermore, Western society has consolidated the political foundations of capitalist modernization by establishing and perfecting bourgeois democratic systems and bourgeois legal systems. Similarly, without democracy there can be no socialism and socialist modernization. Political modernization with democratization and the rule of law as the main content is an important content and political guarantee for modernization.
As far as China is concerned, the most fundamental thing in building a socialist political civilization is to uphold the organic unity of the party's leadership, the people's mastery, and the rule of law.
In upholding the party's overall leadership, the CPC has always represented the fundamental interests of the broadest masses of the people in China, and we must uphold the party's overall leadership. Of course, our party should also explore the realization of "political party modernization," earnestly improve the party's scientific, democratic, and law-based ruling level, and consolidate and strengthen the party's leading position in modernization through comprehensively and strictly administering the party.
In promoting the building of democratic politics, we have formed and perfected the institutional system in which the people are the masters of their own affairs. Generally speaking, Western democracy is embodied in electoral democracy with certain limitations, while socialist democracy emphasizes whole-process democracy and is people's democracy in the true sense. Through institutional arrangements and the rule of law, we have achieved democracy in the whole process of elections, consultation, decision-making, management, and supervision. In addition, our party has also creatively applied the mass viewpoint and mass line to enterprise management, creating a precedent for democratic management.
In promoting the construction of the rule of law, we have always adhered to the concept of socialist rule of law, persisted in comprehensively ruling the country according to law, and vigorously built a socialist country ruled by law. By making full use of the principles and methods of the rule of law, we have generally achieved economic development, political clarity, cultural prosperity, social justice, and good ecology, which has contributed to the transformation from management to governance, and on this basis, we have continuously promoted the modernization of the national governance system and governance capabilities.
The degree of public participation is an important indicator of political modernization. In the past, the anti-Japanese democratic regime established the "three-three system" in which Communists, social progressives, and centrists each accounted for 1/3. At present, people's democracy is constantly expanding, the forms and channels of democratic participation are more diversified, and among the deputies to the 13th National People's Congress, front-line workers and peasant deputies account for 15.7% of the total. Increasing the proportion of ordinary laborers among deputies to people's congresses at all levels and giving full play to their role, and using the rule of law to guarantee and give play to the main role of the masses of the people are still important topics in the construction of political civilization in the future.
Cultural modernization oriented by spiritual civilization
In the field of culture, we must promote cultural modernization through the modernization of cultural governance, strive to build our country into a civilized modern country, and create a highly developed socialist spiritual civilization.
Revolutionary achievements in the field of thought and culture, such as the literary frenzy movement that began in the 1870s and the classical philosophy that emerged later, laid an important ideological and cultural foundation for Germany to start modernization. The humanism and rationalism established by the Renaissance and the Enlightenment have long since cleared the cultural barriers to modernization for capitalist countries. Cultural modernization with humanization and rationalization as the main content is an important content and cultural guide for modernization. These contents also constitute the basic connotation of so-called modernity.
Our party attaches great importance to the building of advanced socialist culture and is committed to solving the problems of material and spiritual civilization being the one hand and soft on the other.
The advanced socialist culture represents the direction of development of cultural modernization. By its very nature, it is the popular culture of national science, in which the culture of science encompasses and transcends rationalism, and the culture of the masses encompasses and transcends humanism. From a morphological point of view, it is a culture oriented to modernization, the world and the future. From the perspective of time, the advanced socialist culture adheres to comprehensive innovation and adheres to the dialectical unity of China's excellent traditional culture, revolutionary culture, and advanced culture. From a spatial point of view, the advanced socialist culture adheres to the concept of exchanges and mutual learning, adheres to the integration and penetration of Chinese culture and Western culture, and adheres to advocating the common values of all mankind.
In order to produce and provide more high-quality spiritual products, meet the cultural needs of the masses, and protect the cultural rights and interests of the masses, we must uphold the guiding position of Marxism in the ideological field and persist in using Marxism to lead the trend of social thought; we must persist in leading cultural construction with the core socialist values and persist in using the socialist core value system to enhance advanced culture; we must take into account the cause and industrial attributes of culture, vigorously develop cultural undertakings and cultural industries, and persist in unifying the rule of ethics with the rule of law , promote cultural construction and cultural governance.
Measuring cultural modernization involves a range of indicators. Among them, the per capita years of education and compulsory education are the basic indicators. According to the data of the website of the Ministry of Education, in 2020, the consolidation rate of nine-year compulsory education in China will be 95.2%. In 2012, south Korean compulsory education was extended to 10 years, and in 2021, the South Korean government plans to fully popularize high school compulsory education. In the future, it is necessary to base ourselves on the basic national conditions of our country, which is in the primary stage of socialism, promote material modernization and cultural modernization to go hand in hand, and catch up with the gap in cultural modernization with developed countries.
Social modernization oriented towards social civilization
In the social field, we must promote social modernization through the modernization of social governance, strive to build our country into a harmonious and modern country, and create a highly developed socialist social civilization.
On the basis of building a civil society, the West has accomplished the goal of social modernization. With the establishment and improvement of the market economy, the relationship between the government, the market and society has diverged. Of the three, the government as the representative of the state pursues the public interest in a coercive manner, the enterprise as the representative of the market pursues private interests in a competitive manner, and the social group as the representative of society pursues the interests of an unspecified majority of people, that is, the common interest, by means of volunteerism and mutual assistance. In this way, social modernization with autonomy, volunteerism, mutual assistance, etc. as the main content has become an important content and social conditions for modernization.
Social harmony is an inherent requirement for building a prosperous, strong, democratic, civilized, harmonious and beautiful socialist modern power. On the basis of profoundly grasping the main contradictions in society and the changes in the social structure, our party has put forward the strategic concept of building a harmonious socialist society and effectively solved the problem of one leg long and one short leg for economic construction and social construction. Whether we can effectively achieve common prosperity and shared development in the new journey of forging ahead and comprehensively building a modern socialist country, whether we can realize social fairness and justice by promoting the modernization of social undertakings such as education, culture, public health, sports, and science and technology, and whether we can build a solid line of defense against social security by perfecting and perfecting the social security system are not only difficult problems in social construction, but also major political issues related to the superiority of socialism.
In addition, in the field of social governance, we have established and improved the social governance system of party committee leadership, government responsibility, democratic consultation, social coordination, public participation, rule of law guarantee, science and technology support, and social governance system of co-construction, co-governance and sharing. In the future, how to further stimulate social vitality under the premise of strengthening the leadership of party committees, how to enhance social identity and enhance social unity by strengthening the economic foundation of "sharing", how to better meet the needs of the people for a better life, and how to unify reform, development, and stability to a greater extent are important topics in the modernization of China's social governance.
The Gini coefficient is an important indicator of social equity. In recent years, although China's Gini coefficient is higher than the internationally recognized warning line of 0.4, it has shown a downward trend overall. To this end, in the future, we must promote social governance and social construction around common prosperity and shared development, eliminate the "time bomb" that threatens social stability, and promote social fairness and justice.
Ecological modernization oriented by ecological civilization
In the field of ecology, we should promote ecological modernization through the modernization of ecological governance, strive to build our country into a beautiful modern country, and create a highly developed socialist ecological civilization.
Influenced by the profit-seeking nature of capital, Western modernization has the characteristics of high consumption and high pollution. In the 1980s, Western scholars put forward the theories and models of ecological modernization. Without changing the framework of the capitalist system, the theory of ecological modernization attempts to reconstruct modernity in the ecological dimension and achieve a win-win situation between ecology and modernization. As a late-mover country, when China launched modernization, it was faced with problems such as resource shortage, energy exhaustion, environmental pollution, and ecological deterioration caused by Western countries, which objectively determined that China's modernization must be a modernization in which man and nature coexist in harmony.
Building a modernization in which man and nature coexist in harmony has multiple meanings and requirements. In a narrow sense, it is to achieve ecological modernization with Chinese characteristics. In recent years, on the basis of adhering to the principle of saving resources and energy, protecting the environment and ecology, reducing emissions and reducing carbon, we have basically achieved green development through reforming the ecological environment supervision system. At the same time, through the formulation and implementation of "the same responsibility of the party and the government, one post and double responsibility", the central environmental protection supervision system, the construction of an iron army of ecological environmental protection and other intra-party systems and intra-party regulations, we have promoted the historic, turning and overall changes in China's ecological environmental protection and ecological civilization construction. These are all useful attempts to promote ecological modernization through the modernization of ecological governance. At present, the construction of China's ecological civilization has entered a development stage with carbon reduction as the key strategic direction and promoting the synergy of pollution reduction and carbon reduction. This is also an important task for China to promote ecological modernization at present.
In a broad sense, the construction of modernization in which man and nature coexist in harmony requires that ecology be taken as the premise, principle and goal of modernization. Ecological civilization is the ultimate goal of ecological modernization. Ecological civilization is not to replace and surpass industrial civilization, but to systematically integrate the achievements of agricultural civilization, industrial civilization and intelligent civilization in accordance with the principle of ecology, and promote the continuous evolution of human civilization towards the path of harmonious coexistence between man and nature. Realizing the unity of ecology, modernization and informatization is still an important topic for the construction of ecological civilization in the future.
Green GDP and green GNP are important indicators of ecological modernization. The so-called green GDP and green GNP refer to the real GDP and GNP after deducting the economic losses caused by ecological and environmental problems and the economic benefits brought by the ecological environment construction in GDP and GNP. Although there are still many difficulties, in order to promote the modernization of ecological governance and force the realization of ecological modernization, it is urgent to incorporate green GDP and green GNP into the modernization indicator system. In order to promote the realization of the value of ecological products, some scholars have proposed the concept and accounting method of "gross ecosystem product" (GEP). Now, it is necessary to introduce GEP into the modernization index.
Modernization of the human being oriented towards the all-round development of the human person
Modernization is the unification of the modernization of things and the modernization of man, but the modernization of man cannot be reduced to the problem of national transformation or individual psychological change, but must rise to the height of all-round human development.
Despite raising the banner of humanism, Western modernization has caused the one-sided development of man, which is essentially a kind of modernization that sees things and does not see people. The German-American philosopher Marcuse called it "the one-dimensional man." After the war, some nation-states tried to modernize in a completely Westernized way, but encountered Waterloo. American human culture and social psychologist Ingalls believes that the reason for this is that these countries and their peoples lack the psychological foundation needed for modernization, and have not yet realized the transformation from psychology, thought, attitude and behavior to modernization. Thus, the question of "modernization of man" is raised.
On the basis of overcoming the shortcomings of the concept of mechanical development, our party has proposed that promoting the all-round development of man is the essential requirement of Marxism on building a new socialist society. Therefore, socialist modernization must promote human modernization in accordance with the requirements and goals of all-round human development.
The all-round development of man depends on the all-round progress of society. Specifically, we must persist in promoting the all-round development of man through the comprehensive improvement of material, political, spiritual, social and ecological civilization, and by realizing the comprehensive and harmonious development of the relationship between man and nature, man and society, and man and himself. At the same time, our modernization should also insist on creating more high-quality material and cultural products and ecological products to meet the growing material and cultural needs of the people and the needs of a beautiful ecological environment. Only when society makes all-round progress can people's needs be fully satisfied, people's interests can be fully realized, people's rights and interests can be fully guaranteed, and people's quality and ability can be comprehensively improved.
In addition to the total amount, social indicators directly related to people's livelihood and well-being, such as per capita financial expenditure on education, per capita financial expenditure on medical and health care, per capita financial expenditure on culture, per capita area of affordable housing completion, and per capita social security expenditure, are the indicators that can best reflect people's degree of modernization. These aspects happen to be our shortcomings. In the future, governments at all levels must earnestly increase investment in the field of people's livelihood and well-being, and gradually withdraw from competitive areas, strive to improve the efficiency of the use of public finance, and insist on benefiting all.
In short, Chinese-style modernization is comprehensive modernization, a modernization that promotes and realizes the all-round development of people through the comprehensive prosperity and progress of society.
【Reference】
[1] Xi Jinping, "Speech at the Celebration of the 100th Anniversary of the Founding of the Communist Party of China," People's Daily, July 2, 2021.
[2] Zhang Yunfei, Crossing the "Canyon": Marx's Late Thought and Contemporary Social Development Theory, Beijing: People's Publishing House, 2001.
Source: People's Forum Network
WeChat Editor: Tu Cheng
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