By Chen Xiao
| The aerial photo, taken on 8 December 2016, shows the night view of Sanya, an international duty-free city. Located at the southernmost tip of Hainan Island, Sanya has developed from a small fishing village into a noted tourist city. |
This 1 October marks the 68th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. Over the past 68 years, under the strong leadership of the Communist Party of China, the Chinese people have been making unremitting efforts to forge ahead and have transformed China from a poor and weak past into a new socialist China of happiness, promise and prosperity. Fundamental changes have taken place and great achievements have been accomplished, creating a Chinese miracle in global economic development and marking a glorious chapter in the Chinese history.
Over the past five years, focusing on comprehensively building a moderately prosperous society in all respects and realizing socialist modernization, the CPC with comrade Xi Jinping at its core put forward the Five Development Concepts, namely innovation, coordination, green, openness and sharing. Efforts have been made to coordinate the implementation of the "Four Comprehensives" strategy, which is comprehensively building a moderately prosperous society, comprehensively deepening reform, comprehensively governing the nation according to law and comprehensively strictly governing the Party. The CPC has committed itself to adapting to and steering the new normal of economic development, implementing in-depth the strategy of innovation-driven development and bringing new and strong vitality to the economy, ensuring growth while maintaining stability, making constant new progress in the Chinese social and economic development.
China's overall national strength and international stature has achieved historical progress.
China has remained committed to economic development as the central task. We adhere to reform and opening up, and are making constant efforts to ensure steady growth, promote reform, adjust the economic structure, and improve people's livelihood. We are careful in risk prevention, and are taking credible steps to ensure that the Chinese economy maintains a medium-to-high growth rate and the country moves toward medium-to-high income level.
When the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, China's GDP was only 18.9 billion US dollars, while per capita GDP was 35 dollars. When China embarked on its reform and opening up in 1978, its GDP and per capita GDP reached 216.8 billion dollars and 227 dollars respectively. In 2010, China' GDP exceeded that of Japan, becoming the world's second largest economy. In 2016, China's GDP and per capita GDP increased to over 11 trillion dollars and 8,000 dollars respectively. Over the past nearly four decades of reform and opening up, China has successfully lifted over 700 million people out of poverty. In recent years, we have been keeping the strong momentum of lifting over 10 million people out of poverty each year. China is committed to the ambitious goal of complete elimination of poverty out of its 1.4 billion population by 2020.
Despite of the sluggish recovery of the global economy and lack of growth momentum, from 2013 to 2016, China's GDP still grew by an average rate of 7.2% per year, higher than the 2.5% of world average, contributing to over 30% of global growth, exceeding that of all developed countries combined. In the first half of this year, China's GDP grew by a decent 6.9%. From 2013 to 2016, the number of newly created urban jobs has been keeping at over 13 million for four consecutive years.
Scientific development lights up the stage of innovation.
Innovation is the primary driving force for development. In recent years, the Chinese government has been committed to innovation-driven development strategies and has been earnestly implementing the "Made in China 2025" and "Internet Plus" action plan, enabling scientific innovation to play a leading role in economic growth, and injecting fresh and strong impetus into China's development, greatly stimulating mass entrepreneurship and innovation by all, as well as the vitality and potential of innovation across the whole society. A new generation of information technology featuring mobile internet, Internet of Things, cloud computing has embarked on a path of rapid development, giving rise to new industries and new products, and leading to new sources of growth, greatly expanding the scope of development.
Entrepreneurial innovation is bursting with dynamism as mass entrepreneurship and innovation by all becomes a prevailing trend across the Chinese society. New industries and business models keep emerging one after another. Statistics shows that an average of 15,000 new businesses were registered daily, with the addition of self-employed traders and other market entities, an average of 45,000 new entities were added to the market daily in 2016. Across China, there are over 4,200 spaces for crowd innovation, and over 4,000 technology incubators and accelerators. 28 entrepreneurship and innovation demonstration centers are under rapid development. In 2016, China ranked the world's 25th in the Global Innovation Index, the top place among middle-income countries.
With the extensive application of modern information technology, integration among traditional industries and "Internet Plus" have been picking up speed. Emerging businesses such as e-commerce have been on a fast rise and produced remarkable spillover effects in the digital economy. Last year, online retail sales reached over 760 billion US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 26.2%. On the Single's Day (11 November) online shopping festival, a total of over 17 billion dollars in sales was generated on Taobao.com, covering 235 countries and regions. Skyrocketing online sales gave impetus to the growth of supporting industries such as express delivery services. In 2016, logistics companies in China delivered over 31.3 billion packages, which helped create 200,000 jobs. New forms of business mushroomed, including cross-border and social networking e-commerce, smart home technology, intelligent transportation and online education and medical services. By the end of 2016, there are 140 million online education users, and 195 million internet medical service users. Digital and smart lifestyles have made their way into hundreds of millions of Chinese households.
The achievements of infrastructure development have caught the attention of the world.
When the People's Republic of China was just founded, a salient problem faced by China then was the weak infrastructure and industrial base, which seriously restrained economic development and the improvement of people's livelihood. After 68 years of rapid development, especially since the reform and opening up, China's infrastructure has improved significantly. Large and medium-sized cities have taken on brand-new looks, and a modernized network integrating sea, land and air transport has been put in place.
In 1978, there were no highways in China and the construction of highways did not start until early 1990s, while in the US, highways were built as early as 1930s under the Roosevelt New Deal. Today, China boasts a massive network of highways and rail lines extending all over the country connecting major large and medium cities. In 2016, 4.7 million kilometers of highways were in service, in which there are 131,000 kilometers of expressways, longer than any other country in the world. There are 124,000 kilometers of railways in service, 5.6 times of that of the early days of the new China. The high-speed railways in operation reached 22,000 kilometers, accounting for over 60% of the world's total. China's high-speed trains at 350 km/h have largely facilitated the development of domestic tourism and the movement of people across regions. In 2016, a total of over 1.4 billion people took high-speed trains.
With the accelerated implementation of Broadband China, the world's largest broadband communication network has been basically put in place. In 2016, the number of subscribers of fixed and internet broadband services reached 297 million, and China's netizen population reached 731 million. Mobile users reached 1.36 billion, in which 695 million are mobile phone internet users, while in 1978, the number of fixed telephone users was only 1.92 million and there were zero mobile phone users and netizens.
Reform and opening up brought China development and prosperity.
Over the past 68 years, especially nearly four decades' time since the reform and opening up, China has been adapting to new situation of economic globalization and pursing a proactive opening-up strategy, building a new open economic system, and accelerating the shift on foreign trade and investment models. China has been adhering to the coordinated development of export and import, trade in goods and trade in services, and has been making efforts to both attracting foreign investment and making investment overseas. With the further deepening and broadening of opening-up, the dynamism of an open economy is set to grow even stronger.
China will remain committed to reform across the board and to further opening up. China has not only benefited from economic globalization but also contributed to it. The total exports and imports in goods reached 3.6 trillion dollars, accounting for over 11% of the world's total. The exports and imports of services totaled 657.5 billion dollars, the second highest in the world. From 2013 to 2016, China utilized 489.4 billion dollars of foreign investment, representing an average annual growth rate of 3.1%; non-financial outward foreign direct investment reached 491.5 billion dollars, up by an average annual rate of 21.6%. The scale of utilization of foreign investment and investment overseas both reached record high. In 2016, Chinese tourists made 4.44 billion domestic travels and 122 million overseas trips. In the next five years, China will import 8 trillion dollars of goods, receive 600 billion dollars of foreign investment and invest 750 billion dollars overseas, and overseas trips will reach 700 million.
Fundamental improvements have taken place in people's livelihood.
In the early years since the founding of New China, people lived in extreme poverty with minimal access to food and clothing. Today, the Chinese government and the Chinese people are dedicated to the ambitious goal of building "xiaokang", a moderately prosperous society in all respects. China has successfully lifted over 700 million people out of poverty, becoming the first developing country to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goal to cut the poverty population by half. Personal income of the Chinese people has been growing at a rapid rate and the quality of life has improved markedly. The personal per capita disposal income in 2016 exceeded 3,500 dollars, and the per capita consumption expenditure exceeded 2,500 dollars. The Engel coefficient of was 30.1%, close to 20%-30%, the well comfortable life standard set by the UN.
China's development is inseparable from the world, and the world's development also needs China. China is willing to work with the international community to promote strong, sustainable, balanced and inclusive growth of the world economy, and work together to create a community of shared future for mankind and open a new chapter of mutually beneficial cooperation, making greater contributions to the world economic growth and the well-being of mankind.