Is China rich enough to claim a ‘well-off society’? One ex-official says grand economic goal can wait

A former state official says China should wait to declare that it has built a “comprehensively well-off society” – a milestone goal in President Xi Jinping’s “Chinese dream” of national rejuvenation – since the country still has 1.1 billion people not qualified as middle class.

Beijing had pledged to achieve the goal this year. But this week’s comments by He Keng, former deputy director of the Financial and Economic Affairs Committee of the National People’s Congress, run contrary to the Communist Party line.

And his words, now censored online in mainland China, bring to light a lack of consensus in the country about the biggest self-imposed performance goal set by the Chinese leadership – one that was to see the nation double its gross domestic product from 2010 to this year, while realising other improvements in terms of governance and the environment.

Speaking at an economic forum in Beijing on Sunday, He said an announcement this year that the country has successfully built up a “comprehensive well-off society”, generally implying that everyone feels relatively safe and affluent, would not be very convincing if most people have not felt a noticeable improvement in their quality of life or income.

“The middle-income group should be the dominant part of a comprehensive well-off society,” He said at the forum. “How can we claim that we are comprehensively well-off when 600 million people – half of the national population – earn a monthly income of just 1,000 yuan (US$143)?

“The [Tokyo] Olympic Games were postponed for a year; why can’t we postpone [the milestone goal] for one or two years? That way, the results would be more convincing.”

Given the state of the world amid the coronavirus pandemic, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach agreed in March to postpone the 2020 Tokyo Games.