China is promoting high-quality development to expand national growth and foster common prosperity for everyone. Common prosperity covers enrichment of people’s lives in both the material and non-material sense.

Theory and practice

According to Karl Marx, socialism is the first stage of communism and it covers an extended historical period in which the principle is distribution according to one’s work to rekindle the worker’s enthusiasm for work. At the higher stage of communism, the principle “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” will be practiced, to realize common prosperity for all.

Chris Rowley, a professor emeritus from Bayes Business School, City University of London said, “common prosperity is a worthy ideal. Its conceptual fluidity requires some definitional delineation and meaningful measures.”

Rowley points out that “common” and “prosperity” should be clarified theoretically. “For example, what is meant by ‘common,’ the state, regions, cities, all people, workers; and what is ‘prosperity,’ for example, in monetary, equality, living conditions, access to social services terms?”

To promote common prosperity, Rowley suggested a series of measures. “Promoting common prosperity would involve a judicious mix of both policy and practice. This includes not only government exhortation and encouragement, but also use of role models, as well as taxation incentives and regimes.”

High-quality development

To realize more substantive progress in common prosperity for everyone, China needs to achieve high-quality development. China has eradicated absolute poverty and contributed to the global fight against poverty. Through Belt and Road cooperation, China creates more development opportunites for China and the countries and regions along the routes. As China joined the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), it has also brought about stability and prosperity to RCEP countries with more regional trade and investment opportunities. “RCEP is an important signal that Asia will pursue further regional integration, at least trade-wise. RCEP is certainly a positive step in terms of further regionalization of trade within Asia,” said Alicia García-Herrero, a senior fellow at European think-tank Bruegel.