By Charles Onunaiju
The highly anticipated and world keenly-watched Third plenary session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China has concluded in Beijing. The Communist Party of China (CPC) traditionally holds seven plenary sessions in between the five years of each National Congress of the Party.
However, since 1978, the 3rd plenary session of the 11th Central Committee of the Party, 3rd Plenary sessions have held special significance, not least for its policy setting agenda, especially on issues of economic modernization.
The iconic 3rd plenary session of the 11th Central Committee of the CPC was the epochal starting point at which the party decided to take economic modernization as the core of its work and famously put forward the epic “Reform and Opening up” to the outside world, the two policies that launched China to the stratosphere of economic growth of two digit figures for nearly three decades in a straight row.
It was the world’s fastest growth known in all human history of economic growth. As it was well known, it was not a growth for growth sake, but growth that delivered concrete improvement in the living conditions of more than 800 million people, the shortest period in all human history when such number of people has been taken out of extreme poverty.
Equally significant, the plenary session of the 18th Central Committee took an important decision to launch China on the finishing line to accomplishing the Party’s centenary goal of “building a moderately prosperous society” for all Chinese people by 2021. The Party dutifully achieved the objective and ended extreme material need or extreme poverty among the 1.4 billion Chinese people, despite that the period leading up to Centenary of the Party’s founding in 2021 was fraught with the uncertainty of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The 3rd Plenum of the 20th Central Committee of the CPC which began on the 15th of July and concluded on the 18th has again underlined the significance of the 3rd Plenums of the Communist Party of China as fundamentally practical problem-solving, hope-reinvigorating, confidence-enabling and optimistically forward-looking.
In the final communiqué of the three-day meeting, the top leadership examined issues relating to comprehensively further deepen reforms with a view to advance China’s modernization.
Reflecting on the party’s work since the 20th National Congress of the Party which was held in 2022, the Plenary attendees agreed that “as a result of these efforts, we have achieved economic recovery and growth and made firm strides in building a modern socialist country in all respects”. And despite the remarkable strides, the Party has secured in comprehensively deepening reforms and advancing China’s modernization; “the present and future”, according to the session admitted, “constitute a critical period” in the endeavor to move toward national rejuvenation on all fronts through China’s modernization. The theme of further comprehensively deepening reform and opening up, not only has implication for maintaining the momentum of China’s economic growth for high quality development, but a boon to global recovery for which there is common understanding that China is playing and would continue to play pivotal roles.
The 3rd Plenary session of the 20th Central Committee of the CPC outlined general principles of the country’s foreseeable economic trajectory in which it assured to foster “a high-standard socialist market economy”, that will also “provide guarantee for Chinese modernization”. The Plenary affirmed that the country “must better leverage the role of the market, foster a fairer and more dynamic market environment and make resource allocation as efficient and as productive as possible”, and also pledged to “lift restrictions on the market while ensuring effective regulations,” and “striving to better maintain order in the market and remedy market failures”.
The importance of the Plenary’s stance in respect to market reform cannot be lost to developing countries struggling through market related reforms and the imperative of contingency plan in case of a “market-failure”. Beyond the confidence in market-self driven mechanism, a night-watchman strong and credible State is necessary not only to hold the rings for fair play but to ensure the system’s continued health and resilience.
The Plenum further outlined that it would “ensure that economic entities under all forms of ownership have equal access to factors of production in accordance with the law, compete in the market on an equal footing and are protected by the law as equals, thus enabling entities under different forms of ownership to complement each other and develop side by side”, with further reaffirmation that China “will build a unified national market and refine the systems underpinning the market economy”
These key general principles, which would certainly be worked into specific policy outlines by the government greatly illuminate the path of China’s reform and opening up to the outside world, as eternal features and characteristics of contemporary China and which are both irreversible and a continuous work in progress. The implication is China would remain a solid partner to the world as far openness, inclusiveness, shared responsibility and shared prosperity is the common theme to which the majority of humanity gravitates.
The third Plenum of 20th Central Committee of the CPC has again contributed to the manifesto of inclusive globalization that works for all, by reaffirming that China will be open as a bastion of free enterprise. To give context that China’s modernization is not one of abstract statistics, the Plenum vowed that “ensuring and enhancing the people’s well-being in the course of development is one of the major tasks of Chinese modernization”. Further vowing “to do everything within our capacity,” the Plenum pledged to “refine the system for guaranteeing basic public services, work to provide inclusive public services, meet essential needs and provide a cushion for those most in need and focus on resolving the most practical problems that are of the greatest and the most direct concern to the people, so as to meet people’s aspiration for a better life”.
The implication for policy choices in this respect is that its success must reflect in the improvement in the quality of life for the people that “meet people’s aspiration for a better life”. Most emerging economies have had their growth trajectories vitiated by the growth of special and vested interests and ended up in the so-called middle-income trap, which China has avoided, with the Communist Party of China having neither interest of its own nor of any special interest group, but the broadest interest of the vast majority of the Chinese people.
The 3rd Plenary session of the 20th Central Committee in its three-day meeting reaffirmed that the modernization China pursues is the modernization of peaceful development and reiterated that in foreign relations, the country would continue to be firm in her commitment to independent foreign policy of peace and dedication to promoting a human community with a shared future.
China would further integrate and seek to give concrete expression to mankind’s shared values, in the course of pursuing the important initiatives of Global Development, Security and Civilization and commitment “to an equal and multipolar world and universally beneficial and inclusive economic globalization”
The Plenum of the CPC is not only a platform to outline principles that would guide the country’s policy trajectories but also an important moment to reaffirm what the party is, what it stands for and what energizes and provides her with the enormous clarity that drives her vision and purpose.
It reaffirms her fidelity to her ideological creed and theoretical fountains; Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory; the Theory of the Three Represents, Scientific outlook on Development and a commitment to fully implement Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for the New Era.”
The meeting of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China at her 3rd Plenary session has demonstrated the discipline, rigour, meticulousness, deliberate and methodical approach to governance from which the so-called “China’s economic miracle” was created and still been qualitatively developed.
• Onunaiju, Research Director of Think Tank in Abuja, Nigeria