Translation of Xi Jinping's "To Firmly Drive Common Prosperity" Essay
One thing I find difficult to reconcile is China’s apparent success in adopting capitalist, free market principles set against manifestos like this, which talk about building a great “socialist state”. Is that label meaningless intentionally? Is it a sincerely held (but misguided) belief? Is it simply a preview of how China plans to ultimately take (forceful) public ownership of the fruits of private industry and innovation? Or is all of this planning and adoption of market economies just a means to birth a socialist end state into existence?<p>I also found the following portion chilling, as it has all the undertones of propaganda and the worst of the Cultural Revolution, except it’s all being admitted in the open:<p>&gt; Fifth, we must promote common prosperity in the spiritual [and moral] lives of the people. The promotion of common prosperity is highly integrated with the promotion of all-round human development. We must strengthen the guidance of the Socialist Core Values, and education on patriotism, collectivism and socialism. We must develop [our] public culture enterprise, improve the public culture service system, and continuously meet the diverse, multi-levelled, and multi-faceted spiritual, moral and cultural needs of the people.<p>&gt; We must strengthen public opinion guidance on driving common prosperity to provide a favourable public opinion environment. In doing so, we should clarify various fuzzy understandings, and guard against impatience and fear of difficulties.