High-quality Development is the Top Task

High-quality development is the top task of building China into a modern socialist country in all respects.

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core, clearly pointed out the following changes based on China's economic development in the new era. While socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a new era, China's economic development has also embarked on a new phase, characterized by its economic shift from rapid growth to high-quality development. Promoting high-quality development is the fundamental requirement for China's development philosophy, economic policies, and macroeconomic regulation at present and in the period to come. Implementing the new development philosophy and promoting high-quality development is a profound change for the overall modernization drive.

China will realize high-quality development in which innovation is the primary driving force; coordination is an endogenous feature; go-green is a prevailing mode; openness is the only path; and sharing is the fundamental goal.

Over the past decade, China's economic strength, scientific and technological strength, and overall national strength have reached new heights. Having become the world's second largest economy, its GDP per capita has risen to RMB 81,000.

At the same time, the proportion of China's total R&D investment to its GDP has increased from 1.91% in 2012 to 2.44% in 2021. China has also risen from the 34th place to 11th on the Global Innovation Index (GII). Its urbanization rate has increased from 53.1% to 64.7%; the per capita disposable income gap between urban and rural residents has dropped from 2.88:1 to 2.5:1. Average life expectancy has reached 78.2 years. The middle-income group has gradually expanded, and nearly 100 million rural poor people have been lifted out of poverty. China has built the largest education, social security, and healthcare systems in the world. Ecological and environmental protection has undergone historic, transformative, and comprehensive changes. China will actively guard against and defuse various risks. The above shows a gradual improvement in China's development.

The 20th National Congress of the CPC made high-quality development the top task of building China into a modern socialist country in all respects, which further highlights the overall and long-term significance of high-quality development. High-quality development, embodying the new development philosophy, provides a more solid material foundation and a basic path for building a modern socialist country in all respects. With security as its precondition, high-quality development constitutes an important guarantee for promoting the steady and long-term modernization drive, and is the fundamental support to ensure that the modernization drive can continuously meet the people's needs for a better life.