The "China 2030" Report
The World Bank and one of China’s leading government think-tanks, the Development Research Center of the State Council (DRC), recently released China 2030: Building a Modern, Harmonious, and Creative High-Income Society, the culmination of more than a year of collaborative research. The report finds that, if China is to transition from a middle-income to high-income society, it must deepen economic and fiscal reform, foster innovation and environmentally sustainable practices, and improve social services and China’s integration with the global community.
Among its many concrete recommendations, China 2030 suggests:
- further reforming the banking sector and state enterprises, allowing them to more fully respond to market forces;
- accelerating labor reforms by providing pensions, health and unemployment insurance, and greater freedom to seek jobs in other cities and provinces;
- increasing the quality of Chinese R&D, as opposed to just the quantity;
- ensuring local governments have adequate financing to meet their increasing responsibilities, reducing their dependence on land-seizure, corruption, and other destabilizing and unsustainable methods of generating income;
- carefully integrating the Chinese financial sector with global finance, including currency reform;
- preparing to respond to a variety of risks and shocks, but not allowing immediate concerns to undermine long-term priorities