During the Four Countries Think Tank Joint Research Report Release and International Symposium on “Decisive Battle: The Progress of China's Comprehensively Deepening Reform and High-Standard Opening Up in the New Era and Prospects for 2029 and 2035', Radhika Desai, Professor at the Department of Political Studies, and Director of Geopolitical Economy Research Group, University of Manitoba (GERG) gave a speech, what she said is as follows:

Hello,

I would like to thanks the Chongyang institute and particularly Dean Wang Wen and Deputy Dean Yang Qingqing for the invitation to speak at the launch of their very important report, Decisive Battle: The Progress of China's Comprehensively Deepening Reform and High-Standard Opening Up in the New Era and Prospects for 2029 and 2035.

China’s economic success, not just since 1978 but since 1949, has excited both admiration and envy. However, most, whether admiring or envious, do not appreciate just how great is the magnitude of China’s achievement. Usual comparisons of China with Western countries or the United States forget a key fact: that China’s economic and social advances have been achieved from a starting point that was farther back from that of the West given the setbacks imposed by imperialism, that they were achieved without the benefit of imperialism that Western countries enjoyed when they industrialized, and that these achievements were made in the teeth of continuing imperialist resistance to the development efforts that formed the foundation of any serious anti-imperialist project. Such imperialist resistance to China’s development continue today and are even admitted by high-level US state officials who openly state that the US aims to ‘hobble’ China.

Such development in the face of imperialism is not easy and the history of efforts is littered with many failures. However, what the history of development of all countries, whether developed or still developing, tells us is that, contrary to the usual advice given by the West to the rest of the world, that the best way to develop is by leaving the market to manage the economy, such laissez-faire free market and free trade approaches to development are, in fact, sure fire recipes for subordination to imperialism, economic retardation, technological backwardness and poverty, and not for genuine and strong development. In reality, without some clearly defined state effort to foster growth, technological development and full employment of all resources, no development is possible has ever taken place. This is a long process and there are bound to be many failures, hopefully temporary and local. However, the reaction to local or temporary failures cannot be the abandonment of the state-directed path. It has to be a determination to learn from the difficulties and failures and to try again. Too many countries have given up this effort in favor of neoliberal free market, free trade policies.

Seen in this light, the Resolution of the recent Third Plenum is exemplary. The outcome of the Third Plenum has been, as expected, widely criticized in the West for the simple reason that it dares to propose what the West wishes China will be never do and what the west simply still cannot believe China is capable of doing, that is to say, mastering the productive forces in a way that puts it ahead of their decaying financialized capitalist economies of the homelands of capitalism and imperialism.

The Financial Times was typical. It foregrounded a disappointment that the Plenum did not address the country’s ‘pressing challenges’, which it listed as slow growth, unemployment, property slump, local government debt, an ageing society and risk of deflation. It perfunctorily lamented that ‘lack of assertiveness on resolving these deep-seated woes is a missed opportunity’, the business paper came to the real point: ‘For China’s trade partners in the west, there was another disappointing omission. As long ago as 2004, Beijing pledged to reorientate its growth model away from an over-reliance on investment and exports towards household consumption. This, western governments have long hoped, would help reduce China’s huge trade surpluses and invigorate global demand.’ There we have it: the West wants China to consume more of its own goods, rather than export them, and it want to export more of its own goods to China. And needless to say, the West does not want China to continue investing in its technological prowess and pose a technological competitive threat to the West's traditional dominance of high technology lines of production.

Nice try, no cookie, says the Third Plenum, and indeed from the Chongyang Institute's new report, Decisive Battle. While the resolution does indeed promise to expand consumption and to expand it massively – after all what is the point of engaging in development if it does not lead to massive increases in the standards of living of the ordinary people? So, it does promise to expand consumption. However, it has neither need not incentive to surrender the expanded market that China will then have to western goods which are unlikely to be of higher quality and lower cost than what China can produce. Moreover, at the same time, it proposes take forward both the reform and opening up – promising ‘new journey of comprehensively deepening reform in the new era with systematic and holistic plans, thus paving the way for a brand new stage in China’s reform and opening up endeavors’ – and the development of new productive forces, promising to

… work to facilitate revolutionary breakthroughs in technology, innovative allocation of production factors, in-depth industrial transformation and upgrading, and the optimal combination of laborers, means of labor, and subjects of labor as well as their renewal and upgrading. All this will give rise to new industries, new business models, and new growth drivers and promote the development of productive forces that are characterized by high technology, high performance, and high quality

These are the words of the resolution. And if the past is any guide, barring small delays here and there, the CPC leadership will deliver on it all. It knows that so many leaderships who abandoned the essential state role in favour of neoliberalism did not: It knows that the way to react to these failures is not to give up, but to learn from the mistakes and failures and strengthen the essential, guiding and foundational role of the state.

In this attitude, which is fully reflected in the Third Plenum Resolution, the CPC party state is supported by important organizations and intellectuals like the Chongyang Institute who recognise these facts. As it says in its report,

The comprehensive deepening of the reform and opening up in the new era will not be easy. Instead, we need to have precise foresight and strategic decision-Making by constantly grasping the laws of economic and social development; to conduct continuous planning and implementation according to our abilities and goal orientations; to deal with dispute coordination and interest integration by continuing to properly handle the relationship between primary and secondary contradictions of our country and society; to accomplishment Containment Breakout and Development Breakthrough by facing up to the blackmails, containment, blockades, and pressures from anti-China forces.

This is the key reason why we may expect, that is to say, the clarity of the understanding of the CPC and the myriad of important organisations like the Chongyang Institute, who support the Party state's development efforts. Those are the key reasons China to go from strength to strength, as the Third Plenum projects.

Thanks very much and let me end by congratulating the Chongyang institute for its exemplary work for China’s development and its newest report, Decisive Battle.

Thanks very much. Bye-bye.