Ding Gang: Watching China's Development through Walking 50 Countries

At 9:00 am, April 1st, 2021, the Global Human Rights Forum lecture series was held at A209 in Research Building of Xueyuan Road Campus, China University of Political Science and Law. Ding Gang, senior researcher of Chongyang Institute of Financial Studies, Renmin University of China, was invited to give a thematic lecture for teachers and students of the Institute for Human Rights. The theme was "Watching China's Development through Walking 50 Countries". Professor Zhang Wei, the Co-director of the Institute for Human Rights of China University of Political Science and Law, was the host.

At the beginning of the lecture, researcher Ding Gang gave a brief self-introduction. As a senior reporter of People's Daily, he has worked abroad for more than 20 years and has went to nearly 60 countries. He has profoundly observed the development process and the great changes in China through his own experience in foreign lands.

First, researcher Ding Gang believes that the standards and hierarchical idea of present Western civilization originated from the Magellan Expedition 500 years ago. The driving force of capital and the expansion of religious belief accelerated the exploration of new sea routes for trade, and for this began the great expansion of Western civilization. The gold cathedrals across Latin America and the African palaces in Brussels are all evidence of the plunder and colonization of ideas by Western powers.

Researcher Ding Gang also used his life and work experience in Sweden as an example to describe the exploration of democratic socialism in Europe. In the process of continuous groping, the Swedish Social Democratic Party put forward functional socialism, which refers to collective wage negotiation through trade unions while primary distribution; and redistribution of social wealth through the government and establishment of social security system to ensure fairness while secondary distribution. This is the embodiment of typical European welfarism, which is also the self-correction of western capitalism in the process of development. Marxism has a significant impact on this.

Researcher Ding Gang believes that to measure which stage of development a country or a society belongs to, there is a reference standard. These "standards" are set by Western countries. In the process of civilization expansion, the West gradually changed its values, ideas and institutions into a universal thing, forming a single line development model and the only standard and order. Under the constraint of western civilization, it is very difficult for non-western countries to find a development path suitable for themselves. He gave examples of why these countries have fallen into the middle-income trap, in which two combinations, lack of Labor mentality with reliance on welfare and expansion of low-end services with retreat of manufacturing, are common problems. Later, researcher Ding Gang introduced the development experience of Singapore, Japan and the Republic of Korea which is worth learning. He pointed out that benefited from good values of family, education, wealth and work, with full play to comparative advantage in global trade, also combined with the positive role of a strong government, Confucian tradition and a fair distribution policy guaranteed by law, the three countries achieved rapid development of modernization.

Then, on how to view the development of China, Researcher Ding Gang pointed out that there are similarities and differences between China's rise and that of the West. With opening up to the world, China is actually rising in a world that has been standardized by the West, we need to "integrate". However, China has also embarked on a different development path from that of the West, one important aspect of which is its development under the leadership of the Communist Party of China. We have found one most effective way of development, which is to vigorously develop industrial modernization. Using an example ofthe popularity of Chinese selfie sticks in in Brazil, he showed that China is the only country in the world that has all the industrial categories in the United Nations industrial classification, having a very complete manufacturing industry.During the process of external development, China has not plundered and Chinese enterprises have provided opportunities for common development around the world, and Chinese standards are spreading to the world. This is one of the main reasons why the United States is clamping down on China in the high-tech sector.

Finally, based on the data such as the share of the financial industry in GDP and the extreme polarization between the rich and the poor, Researcher Ding Gang analyzed the defects of development model the United States. Therefore, he proposed that China should be "de-Americanized" in the process of development. He said, capital force will have a strong shock to all aspects of society in emerging economies such as China, including the management system, people's values, the traditional culture and distribution system, followed by consumerism, money fetishism, and rapidly widening gap between rich and poor, urban and rural and environmental degradation, which will harm the sustainable development. China should seek a path of development more suitable to its own and offer a Chinese solution to mankind's quest for a better social system.

Researcher Ding Gang talked about his experience of traveling in many countries. He started from the spread of Western civilization and its impact on non-Western countries, compared the development practices of some countries, and analyzed the cultural reasons behind China's rise and manufacturing development.The lecture ended successfully in the heated discussion and warm applause of teachers and students.

Written by Zhang Ying & Dong Yifan