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Inside Out | Why securing middle-class prosperity is vital for leaders in China, and the US
- For the Communist Party, achieving ‘common prosperity’ means repairing the fallout from its economic success: endemic corruption and extreme inequality
- For Biden’s Democrats, ensuring prosperity for all could secure election success in 2022
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In most countries, the principle of “common prosperity for all” would be as close to a political cliché as you could get. What more could a modern democratic leader possibly promise?
But for China, and particularly the Communist Party, last week’s call for gongtong fuyu carries a distinct significance.
It harks back to the party’s egalitarian origins and the vision championed by Mao Zedong after the party captured power in 1949. It alludes to the social and political contract engineered by Deng Xiaoping’s leadership as it encouraged people to get rich.
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It reflects the party’s abiding anxiety to bolster its legitimacy – and legacy – in the absence of a fully-fledged democratic mandate.
Most of all, it reflects anxiety that the party should not become a victim of its success. Yes, it has lifted more people out of abject poverty than any government in history, and delivered basic living standards on a scale and speed most international economists thought impossible.
But the very speed of this success has come at a price: the endemic danger of corruption and an inequality so extreme it arouses fears of severe political instability.
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