60 years on, New China still has far to go

• Source: Globaltimes
• [01:07 September 30 2009]
• Comments

When Chinese people hail the 60th birthday of New China tomorrow, with a grand military parade and a mass pageant featuring 200,000 people in the heart of Beijing, they are also taking an important first step toward the nation's next decades.

The past six decades have seen China reinventing itself at such amazing speed that the period has been dubbed the "China Years" by some economists. Stephen Green, a senior economist at Standard Chartered Bank, made the semi-serious calculation that China is experiencing changes so much faster than Western nations that one "American Year" equals merely a quarter of a "China Year."

But fast development in the past does not necessarily guarantee an easy path toward a promising future.

The world has been astonished at China's fast change simply because it has often compared today's China with the stereotyped poor, underdeveloped China of 60 years ago.

Once the stereotype is debunked, the world will find that the farther China goes on its route toward prosperity, the longer and harder every step forward is likely to be.

A recent survey conducted by the Global Times illustrates the point.

A total of 60 well-known Chinese experts assessed that the top issues China has resolved in the past six decades include "successfully feeding its 1.3 billion people" (88.3 percent), and "realizing the independence of the nation" (76.7 percent).

While those are mostly basic domestic and international issues that a modern nation must gain a solid footing in, much tougher issues are waiting to be solved by China in the future, as indicated in the same survey.

They include tackling "global problems such as climate change and environmental protection" and finding "a solution to guarantee sustainable development" (73.3 percent), and "improving China's national image" (68.3 percent).

If China for the past 60 years has often been painted with a single brush, better skills and greater wisdom are required to present a more and more massive and complicated landscape.

Quality will be prioritized over speed. While China is likely to overtake Japan as the world's second-largest economy next year, its per capita GDP ranks only 106th in the world.

To achieve sustainable growth, the environment needs to be protected, the most vulnerable social groups should be well cared for, and corruption has to be curbed.

And above all, socialist values, such as justice and credibility, that the nation stands for must be delivered to the majority of the public.

More uncertainties will confront the nation as the world seeks to have China's role in international affairs match its clout.

But whatever the uncertainty is, as Nikolai Ryzhkov, former chairman of the Council of Ministers of the former Soviet Union, put it, innovation is the key.

Lacking innovation, the former Soviet Union and communist Eastern Europe states collapsed; with the systematic innovation of the reform and opening-up policy, China has thrived.

As the first step is taken tomorrow on our long journey toward the future, it is far too early to predict what China will someday be like.

But it is without a doubt that China will take an innovative approach to deal with any condition as it arises, as the nation has done in the past six decades.

Let us hope when New China celebrates its 100th birthday, it will be a prosperous, democratic, civilized, and harmonious modern socialist nation.