Reform of reform in five years
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After three decades of fast economic growth, China has reached a point where it has to change its growth model, streamline governments' functions and adjust its social structure. A heated debate is raging on what should China focus on for its economic and social development in the next five years.
Chi Fulin, director of the Haikou-based China Institute for Reform and Development (CIRD), said the next stage of reform, called "the second reform" by many, will be even harder to push forward because of the problems accumulated over the past three decades.
Chi led a top research team on political reform from 1986 to 1988 and founded the CIRD, one of the oldest think tanks on China's economic reform and development, in Haikou, capital of Hainan province in 1991. The CIRD held the 70th International Forum on the Transformation of China's Development Model at the end of October in Haikou, where Chi talked with China Daily.
Being at the forefront of research into economic reform for more than 20 years, Chi is fully aware of the maladies of China's growth. "The policy room for further reform has narrowed because different interest groups have taken over a big proportion of social resources owing to the loopholes in the fiscal and taxation systems", Chi said. "Some practices in the name of reform have actually gone against the original intention and principle of the reform."
Contrary to popular belief, the obstacle most difficult to overcome in "the second reform" is not illiteracy and poverty but interest groups that have usurped the rights of the people and now refuse to give them back. Chi said that most of the social problems in China are directly related to structural conflicts such as those of power and wealth distribution. The government needs to rationalize its national wealth distribution system urgently by imposing tax on the real income of individuals and enterprises.
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