Why Is China Still a Developing Country?
By Qiu Jing
W hen I recently referred to China as the world’s largest developing country to some of my European friends,they thought it was a humorous understatement since they have been to many Chinese cities and have the impression that some are on par with cities in developed countries in terms of convenience.
Over the past years, China’s economy has grown rapidly, making it the second largest in the world, after the United States,with hi-tech companies such as Tencent,Huawei and Alibaba also emerging. Many recent Western media reports on China-U.S.trade frictions describe China as a rapidly rising developed country which may challenge the status of the United States as a leading power in the world.
利用医院局域网资源，设定自费及有限定的药品、检查、诊疗项目提示和告知程序，让医生在诊疗中一目了然，并提高智能化提示和操作，规避自费知情投诉的产生。
根据“配第—克拉克”定律，在一个国家或地区的经济发展过程中，符合产业结构演变的基本规律是第一产业在国民经济中的比重会越来越少，而第二、第三产业所占比重将不断加大。农业在国民经济中的地位将会随着工业化和现代化进程被工业和服务业所逐步取代，这也是一个国家和地区的产业结构从低级向高级优化的必然过程。国内学者杨琳、李建伟（2002）采用第二、第三产业增加值之和与当年国民生产总值的比值（ISR）来衡量一个国家或者地区产业结构的变化。用公式表示则如下所示：
This year marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. The nation has indeed made great progress over the past decades. But it’s still a developing country, with a long way to go before it becomes a developed one.
China’s eastern and western regions also have imbalanced development. In Beijing,Tianjin and Shanghai, as well as in Jiangsu,Zhejiang and Fujian provinces, the percapita GDP exceeds $13,000, equaling the minimum level of high-income countries.However, poverty alleviation efforts in some regions in west China are still focusing on meeting people’s basic needs. In addition,the country’s income distribution, ecological protection and social security systems are not yet fully fl edged.
Third, the development mode featuring extensive input and consumption of natural resources needs to be transformed and upgraded. The overall level of social productivity in China is still low and the production structure is inadequate and inappropriate.In the future, China needs to pay more attention to environmental protection while pursuing economic development as people have higher requirements for a better environment. The country also needs to improve the efficiency of investment, which stands at 1∶7, significantly lower than that of developed countries.
Mushroom growers work in a greenhouse in Yongjing County, northwest China’s Gansu Province, on April 20
Sanitary facilities in rural areas are still of poor quality. China launched the “toilet revolution” campaign in 2015, renovating and building more than 70,000 pollutionfree toilets in over three years. However, only 36.2 percent of rural households have inside toilets, while those using outhouses account for 58.6 percent. Some 4.69 million rural households, or 2 percent of the total, have no toilets. Meanwhile, there is still much room for improvement in terms of drinking water quality, medical services and communication facilities.
First, the urban-rural disparity in China remains a prominent problem to be addressed.Currently, the urbanization rate of the country is about 58 percent, lower than that of developed countries which stands at about 80 percent. The income gap between urban and rural residents needs to be narrowed since the per-capita disposable income of the former is 2.7 times that of the latter.Meanwhile, the per-capita consumption expenditure of urban residents is 2.2 times that of rural residents. The gap between urban and rural infrastructure and public services is even more striking.
These issues reflect that the quality of China’s economic development and its technological innovation capability are still inadequate. Compared to developed countries, China enjoys large-scale manufacturing industries and high trade volume, but many domestic industries still land at the low end of the global industrial chain. It exports mainly low-value-added goods and has to import high-value-added products and advanced technologies. China’s cultural soft power,national defense strength, science and technology, and social governance capacity also need to be further enhanced.
A staff member demonstrates a 5G network-based automobile remote control system at an auto exhibition in Shanghai on April 19
4.教学重难点：掌握处理旅游者投诉的程序。能够根据旅游者投诉的现场的情况，正确分析旅游者的投诉心理，并以《旅游法》为准则，合理运用相应的技巧进行处理。
Building roads is a priority in China’s rural poverty alleviation program, as many localities in extreme poverty still don’t have access to highways. Although the country has made great progress in road construction, its road density is low, reaching only 0.51 km per square km in 2017. In contrast, the road density in Germany and Poland was 5.8 km and 2.7 km per square km, respectively, in the same year, while that of India was 1.8 km per square km.
Although the World Bank has classified China as an upper middle-income country according to its per-capita national income,the figure was $7,310 in 2017, representing only 15 percent of that of the United States and less than 25 percent of that of France.This figure was lower than the per-capita income of high-income countries, not even reaching the world’s average level of $10,387.China’s per-capita GDP was about $9,700 in 2018, which was still lower than the bottom line of $13,000 of high-income countries.In addition, per-capita GDP can’t be used as the sole criterion for categorizing developing and developed countries. The Human Development Index issued by the United Nations Development Program is also an important indicator of a country’s strength.In 2017, China’s Human Development Index ranked 86th in the world, putting it at a medium level, far below that of some European countries such as Germany and the UK.
Chinese people are one of the most hardworking in the world. The country’s average working time is 2,200 hours per year,much higher than developed countries in Europe and the United States. According to a survey among metropolises around the world, many Chinese cities are among those with the longest working hours. In some Internet companies in China, a “996”work schedule, which means working from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week, has become common. Such a working mode, which is obviously unsustainable, has provoked criticism.
Second, China’s per-capita income is still below the world’s average. Some Western media outlets have made inflated calculations of some data regarding China’s economy based on purchasing power parity and have concluded that the country’s gross national income is the highest in the world and its per-capita GDP is at the same level as high-income countries. However, the International Monetary Fund calculates the per-capita GDP by referring to a country’s purchasing power parity and categorizes countries into advanced, emerging and developing economies accordingly. Currently,China still falls into the category of developing economies.
China is pursuing high-quality development of the economy through supply-side structural reforms and industrial upgrading,which requires long-term efforts.
其次，从激进左派立场走向中左立场。拉美马克思主义政治组织极为复杂，政治立场从激进的、温和的到托派的，应有尽有。20世纪90年代以来，拉美左派政治光谱发生了显著的偏移，一方面自由主义遭受到了左派的反击，另一方面，激进左派组织也很难在经历了自由主义和民主政治洗礼的拉美大陆获得广泛的群众基础。马克思主义从一个激进的革命政治运动，转变为一个时刻保持对资本主义主要缺陷警醒的社会主义建设运动。无论中国还是拉美主要国家，都在努力寻找一条将社会主义与民主政治有效连接起来的本土化路径。
Fourth, China’s development is still not objectively perceived in the international community. The country is shifting its development mode from focusing on high speed growth to high-quality development and making it a top priority to meet people’s needs for a better life. There are still 30 million poor people and more than 80 million people with disabilities in China. The number of seniors who need care has exceeded 200 million, while the number of people entering the job market per year stands at 15 million.
People’s livelihood remains to be improved through China’s development.However, some Western media outlets have publicized misleading reports on the country’s conditions by highlighting the “China threat” rhetoric when the country sees rapid growth and hyping the “China collapse”argument when it faces development challenges. To some extent, this actually proves that China is a developing country since developed countries still dominate the opinion formation process and agenda setting around the globe.
The author is research assistant with the Institute of World Economics and Politics, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
Copyedited by Rebeca Toledo
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