Zhejiang makes great strides in promoting common prosperity

Photo taken on July 3, 2022 shows the scenery at dusk in Sandu Fishing Village of Jiande City, east China's Zhejiang Province. [Xinhua/Xu Yu]

HANGZHOU -- East China's Zhejiang Province has been striving to pursue common prosperity, with notable progress made in high-quality and green development over the past decade, according to local authorities.

The province saw its GDP reach 7 trillion yuan (about 1.02 trillion U.S. dollars) and its per capita GDP exceed 110,000 yuan in 2021, Yuan Jiajun, secretary of the Zhejiang Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), said at a press conference on Tuesday.

From 2012 to 2021, the incomes of both urban and rural residents in Zhejiang more than doubled, and the province's urbanization rate increased from 63.2 percent to 72.7 percent.

Remarkable breakthroughs have been achieved in many industries, including the internet plus, new materials, and life and health industries, and the added value of the digital economy contributed nearly half of the province's total GDP in 2021.

Holding on to the idea that "lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets," Zhejiang has made solid progress in its green and low-carbon transformation, marching toward the country's carbon peak and carbon neutrality goals while continuously strengthening biodiversity conservation.

As an essential requirement of socialism and a key feature of Chinese-style modernization, common prosperity refers to affluence shared by everyone both in material and cultural terms.

China in 2021 rolled out a guideline to build Zhejiang into a demonstration zone to achieve common prosperity.