Economic Essays | The "Six Things to Open the Door" Benefits of the 14th Five Year Plan | Speed | Economy
In a few days, 2023 will be halfway through. The five years of the 14th Five Year Plan will also complete an extremely unusual and extraordinary journey. Seven things to do in daily life: firewood, rice, oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar, and tea. During the 14th Five Year Plan, there are also six tasks to be completed, all of which are challenges and must be done well.
More than two years ago, when drafting the blueprint for the 14th Five Year Plan, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China proposed an important requirement - to achieve the unity of development quality, structure, scale, speed, efficiency, and safety during the 14th Five Year Plan period. The six parallel keywords can be vividly referred to as the "Six Things to Open the Door" in the 14th Five Year Plan.
In the "14th Five Year Plan" proposal and the "Outline" of the plan, this sentence appears in the paragraph emphasizing one of the five principles to be followed in the "14th Five Year Plan" - "adhering to a systematic concept". To understand these "six things about opening a door", one can at least approach them from three perspectives:
"Safety" is the latest addition. Over the years, with the continuous promotion of development concepts, there has been a gradual increase in the "six things to open the door". "Safety" was the latest addition in the planning of the 14th Five Year Plan.Security is the prerequisite for development, and development is the guarantee of security. Food security, energy security, industrial and supply chain security, financial security, and network information security... To ensure the new development pattern with a new security pattern, this sixth item in the "six things to open the door" is extremely important.
After the six keywords, there are three important words - "unity". Every place, department, and enterprise can link their tasks to these six keywords. What I pursue is "quality", "structure", "scale"... and then coordinate planning and promotion. This is actually the same principle as living a life. We cannot have "salt for breakfast, oil for lunch, and vinegar for dinner" for firewood, rice, oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar, and tea. Instead, we should plan our meals accordingly.
The order of the six things to open the door is full of profound meaning. In the past, when people talked about "development", they often first thought of scale and speed, followed by structure, quality, and efficiency. When planning the 14th Five Year Plan, the order of these six keywords was adjusted to the current order. Its meaning is clear at a glance: China's development still requires continuous expansion of scale and reasonable range of growth rate, but its logical starting point is no longer scale and speed, but quality and structure.
Chinese people speak in a very particular order. The changes in the order of the "six things to open the door" deeply reflect the changes in development concepts. To build a modern socialist country in all respects, we must, first and foremost, pursue high-quality development. In the report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, when emphasizing this primary task, there is a sentence that goes: "Promote the effective improvement of quality and the reasonable growth of quantity in the economy.".
"The effective improvement of quality and the reasonable increase of quantity" are further expressions of the "Six Things to Open the Door". The latter half of the sentence talks about scale and speed, while the pursuit of "quality" is clearly placed at the forefront.
Economic development is a spiral upward process, and when the quantity accumulates to a certain stage, it will inevitably shift towards a qualitative improvement. It is not easy to coordinate and do a good job in the six things that start with "quality".
The "Six Open Doors" of the 14th Five Year Plan are deeply related to the "Seven Open Doors" of people's lives. The starting point and foothold for promoting high-quality development is to meet the growing needs of the people for a better life. Only by achieving high-quality and secure development can we sustainably create employment and improve people's livelihoods.
Quality, structure, scale, speed, efficiency, and safety are all important factors. More importantly, grasp the inherent connection between them. The structure continues to be optimized, the scale continues to expand, the speed is reasonable, the benefits are steadily achieved, and safety is always guaranteed. Ultimately, the focus is on promoting effective quality improvement.
In the first half of the 14th Five Year Plan, there were many opportunities and great challenges. In recent years, the Chinese economy has been under the complex influence of the century long pandemic combined with the reverse flow of economic globalization. Although this has brought significant pressure on scale and speed, we can see that China's efforts to pursue high-quality development have never wavered.
In the second half of the upcoming 14th Five Year Plan, this effort will not waver.
