Q: China has recently advocated a "scientific concept of development." What is the concept aimed at? What problems can it solve?

A: China has achieved great progress after more than 20 years of reform and opening up. However, the country's development has neither been well coordinated nor balanced.

In terms of economic operation, China has been among the countries that consume the highest amount of energy for unit GDP. Coal, electricity and oil have been in consistent short supply in the country. Transport has become a bottleneck. In the past 10 years, China's cultivated land was reduced by five percent, or more than 6 million hectares.

Many provinces by now have used up their land quotas planned for up to 2010. Though the Central Government has carried out macro-controlling measures since 2004, investment in the three big industries of steel, concrete and electrolytic aluminum is still growing at a high rate. The increase of credit and bank loans remains at more than 19 percent. National stock of coal slipped to a 20-year low. We can see that striking contradictions and problems in economic operations have not been fundamentally solved.
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At present, China is in the initial stage of industrialization and so it can't avoid experiencing some of the growing pains that developed economies went through many years ago.

The central government's efforts to help poor areas develop economies and the transfer of traditional industries by multinational corporations from developed countries to China have increased the pressure on China's resources and degraded the country's environment. China is not a country with abundant resources. The resources known at present cannot even satisfy China's current requirements, not to mention meeting future needs. Meanwhile, increasing oil imports will make China's national economic security a more prominent issue.
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Many societal problems have also become more acute, which include low income of farmers, unemployment, widening income gap, environmental pollution, irrational industrial structure, imbalanced regional developments, difficulties of weak groups and social security.
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The emergence of many of these problems, in a certain sense, is a result of our misconception of development. As per capita income has reached US$1,000 in China, the country's development has two different prospects: Doing well, China will march ahead in smoother and sustained development; doing poorly, it will face economic and social risks. Given the current situation, following a scientific concept of development is the key to whether China can realize sustainable development.
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If China wants to follow the concept, it must change its economic growth mode and readjust its economic structure, so as to realize coordination of speed, structure, quality and efficiency. China must also insist on the harmonious development of economy and society, and of cities and countryside, and pay more attention to speeding up social development while promoting economic development. The country must also pay more attention to issues like resources, ecology, environment, harmonious development of humans and nature.