Chapter 38 New Contradictions and New Problems Emerging Since the Reform and Opening Up

Democracy is a good thing, but the government cannot implement democratization in a populist way when faced with the pressure of social democratization.One is populism and the other is constitutional democracy, both of which emphasize the sovereign status of the people.However, in specific operations, the basic tendency of populist politics is to endow "the people" with a supreme and unquestionable status, and to rely only on public opinion in political behavior.As a result, it not only leads to political instability, but often forces the government to pursue welfarist economic policies, thereby depriving the economy of competition. The third debate on China's reform has this issue.In this debate, some people first challenged MBO (management buy out, that is, management buyout), and ignited the fuse. Then, the debate spread and extended to the general policy of China's economic development, the changing trend of China's social class, and the relationship between China's urban and rural areas. The prospect of changes in the reform of state-owned enterprises, reform of property rights in state-owned enterprises, medical care, education, housing reform, rampant corruption, widening gap between rich and poor, lack of protection of basic welfare for the people, and other issues have re-distinguished the "two views on reform" and "would rather comprehensive reform" Stop reform, and don't distort and unjust reform" rhetoric.

There was also a saying at that time that "the working class must be relied on to promote reform and opening up, and the so-called reform and opening up cannot be carried out at the expense of the interests of the working class." The third great debate exposed some problems, and made people see some new contradictions and problems that have formed since the reform and opening up.These new contradictions and new problems can be summed up in five aspects.First, the gap between regions, between urban and rural areas, and between rich and poor is too large.The pressure on population, resources and environment is also increasing.The economy as a whole is not very competitive.The road of extensive development with high energy consumption and high pollution can no longer be followed.Second, the problems directly related to people's livelihood are becoming more and more prominent.Such as expensive medical treatment, difficulty in going to school, high housing prices, difficulty in employment, and poor public security all reflect problems in social employment, social security, medical care, education, housing, social security, and production safety.Third, our systems and mechanisms are imperfect and imperfect, coupled with judicial injustice, opaque decision-making, and information asymmetry.The society has lost fairness, behind-the-scenes transactions and black-box operations are everywhere, harming the interests of ordinary people, and ordinary people encounter various difficulties in safeguarding their rights.Fourth, the combination of power and the market has resulted in collusion between officials and businessmen and power-for-money transactions. Corruption is relatively serious, and a large number of major, important, and low-level cases involving corruption have occurred.One nest after another naturally caused great dissatisfaction among the common people.Fifth, the folk customs and social customs are not correct, lack of integrity, moral anomie, bad social atmosphere, fake and shoddy, cheating and abduction are common, the relationship between people is becoming more and more commoditized, and money first and hedonism are increasingly showing. , The negative effect of self-interest at the expense of others.Therefore, the fuse of the third debate is the reform of state-owned enterprises and the loss of state-owned assets. It is these five points that resonate with everyone, and these five aspects are the issues.In the debate, some people just use these five points as a fuss, saying that our market-oriented reform has gone wrong.Some economists think that we talk too much about marketization and less about socialism, and the market economy is screwed up.I don't think the problem is here.I think the reason for these problems is not that the direction of the market-oriented reform is wrong, but that the market-oriented reform has not been carried out thoroughly, comprehensively, or deeply.That is to say, the problem now is that what should not be marketized has been marketized, and what should have been marketized has not been marketized.What is the problem?In the final analysis, the reform of the political system needs to be deepened.That's how I see it.It is precisely because the reform of the economic system has not been able to ensure the matching of the reform of the political system that has caused so many contradictions and caused so many problems.