{"id":8470,"date":"2021-08-26T07:30:28","date_gmt":"2021-08-26T07:30:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/focus.cbbc.org\/?p=8470"},"modified":"2025-04-23T09:51:10","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T09:51:10","slug":"what-is-chinas-new-common-prosperity-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/focus.cbbc.org\/what-is-chinas-new-common-prosperity-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"What is China’s new “Common Prosperity” policy?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The announcement of a new political slogan \u2014 Common Prosperity \u2014 is the big news out of China in recent weeks, coming in the wake of crackdowns on tech companies and the private education sector<\/span><\/h2>\n

On Tuesday, 17 August, Chinese state media reported that,\u00a0in a meeting of the Chinese Communist Party\u2019s\u00a0Central Financial and Economic Affairs Commission, President Xi Jinping<\/a> \u2013 who was chairing the meeting \u2013 announced that the government needed to \u201cregulate excessively high incomes and encourage high-income groups and enterprises to return more to society.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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This appears to be a big about-turn from the idea that the Party had promoted for decades: That some people and regions would \u201cget rich first.\u201d Deng Xiaoping is well-known for promoting the idea that \u201cto get rich is glorious\u201d during his leadership in the 1980s. Nevertheless, this new policy is not a complete refutation of that idea. Instead, the Party has added the idea that it wants to create an environment where more people have the opportunity to be wealthy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cCommon Prosperity for all\u201d is now the name of the game, and it\u2019s a lofty ambition \u2013 China is home to one of the world\u2019s more unequal societies, with a Gini coefficient of 0.385, which is equal to that of the likes of Burundi, El Salvador, and Israel. For context, China\u2019s Gini coefficient has fallen by five points over the last decade, but it started from a low base, and tangible evidence of progress is limited: the richest 20% earn more than 10 times that of the poorest 20%, and that figure hasn\u2019t moved since 2015.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Analysts have been quick to suggest that this might be another example of \u2018Partycraft\u2019 taking precedence over \u2018Statecraft,\u2019 with the latter being the rigorous and thought-out policy plans that the civil service rolls out and the former being the ambitions of the Party elements\u00a0interwoven into the state organs. For example, at the time of writing, there is no clear indication of how this policy will be carried out.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n