Macroeconomic management in social development

Author: Liu Rui
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-05-01
Features: Preface In the spring of 1995, in Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, the United Nations held the first-ever World Summit for Social Development. The agenda of the meeting focused on three issues: eradicating poverty, increasing employment, and promoting social integration. Although the meeting only adopted two documents—Political Declaration and Programme of Action—with no binding force, and the serious divisions between developed and developing countries were not completely eliminated due to the conference, this global leaders' meeting still marked a new milestone in human society. In fact, since the 1960s, social development has gradually attracted the attention of political leaders, government officials, social scientists, natural scientists, entrepreneurs, and representatives of civil society, as a crucial aspect of national development. The concept of social development, with its specific meaning, has been mentioned countless times in various official and non-official documents. Especially after the 1990s, with the wave of market-oriented economic reforms sweeping across the globe, the call for greater emphasis on social development grew stronger, and it has become an action programme and important policy for most countries internationally. From a historical perspective, the formation of this situation did not happen overnight; it was triggered by a series of events and issues.
I. Unprecedented Global Economic Prosperity but Endless Social Problems
Since the end of World War II, the global economy has experienced unprecedented growth in a relatively peaceful environment. Major developed countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and France continued to maintain a certain momentum of economic growth. Defeated countries like Japan and Germany recovered quickly from the ruins of war and accelerated their growth. Many small and medium-sized developing countries, aftering colonial, also accelerated their economic growth, giving rise to emerging industrial countries such as Singapore, South Korea, Thailand, Mexico, Brazil, and Malaysia. A group of socialist planned economies established after World War II also achieved relatively rapid economic growth for a period of time. More than 150 years ago, Marx summarized: "The bourgeoisie, in its less than a hundred years of class rule, has created more and greater productive forces than all previous generations combined." By the 1990s, after two devastating human wars, global productivity had reached an unprecedented peak. The reasons for this were: first, post-war economic growth benefited from technological revolutions, rapidly applying the fruits of technological progress to productivity development, forming a pattern where economic growth increasingly relied on technological advancement. Second, the opposition and coexistence of the two basic social production methods and economic systems in the world stimulated economic competition and productivity development. Third, in the 1990s, with the end of the Cold War, the trend of economic globalization and marketization accelerated, with resources flowing globally, creating higher production efficiency and material wealth. Rapid economic growth also brought some new changes to society in certain aspects, promoting social development. Among the achievements worth celebrating are: the human life expectancy reaching an all-time high in history, nearly approaching the biological limits of humans as animals; significant improvements in healthcare conditions, with most known life-threatening diseases effectively treated and prevented; and greatly enhanced connections among various ethnic groups in different regions of the world, with increased exchanges, understanding, and assistance among people.
Macroeconomic Management in Social Development
However, the rapid economic growth after World War II did not solve all social problems. Instead, it gave rise to new social problems during the process of economic growth. These social problems were mainly concentrated in the following areas:
1. Poverty Issues. One of the goals of economic growth is to eliminate poverty. However, according to the United Nations' estimates in the early 1990s, more than 1 billion people worldwide were still living in poverty, with about 550 million people going to bed hungry every night and over 1.5 billion people lacking access to clean drinking water and sanitation. Related to material poverty is the issue of spiritual poverty. Globally, about 500 million children did not receive primary education, and approximately 1 billion adults remained illiterate. Although poverty issues are primarily concentrated in developing countries with lower economic levels, there were still 15% of the population living in poverty in Europe, which has the highest economic level in the world. In the 21st century, the number of impoverished people worldwide has shrunk, but due to the social transformation process in some countries, the relatively impoverished population has increased.
2. Income Inequality Issues. One of the direct negative consequences of post-war economic growth was the widening of the North-South gap. The socio-economic gap between developed countries, represented by the Northern Hemisphere, and developing countries, represented by the Southern Hemisphere, has been expanding. According to the United Nations' estimates, 40% of the world's population survives on only 3.3% of the world's total income, while 10% of the population holds most of the world's gross national product. This gap did not shrink in the 21st century but instead continued to widen due to the emergence of a new economy in developed countries, which is based on high-tech industries and information productivity, further exacerbating the income disparity between developed and developing countries, as well as between high- and low-income groups within a country.
3. Destruction of Natural Ecological Environment and Pollution. About 300 years ago, the entire Earth was in a state of ecological balance and good natural conditions, but today these have been severely damaged and continue to deteriorate. The main perpetrators of this damage are humans themselves and the growth model they adopt. According to scientific analysis, the continuous rise in global temperatures, even the so-called "greenhouse effect," is related to the thinning of the atmospheric ozone layer, the emission of large amounts of industrial waste into space, and the destruction of forest vegetation due to deforestation. Unprotected traditional economic growth is the fundamental reason for the above situation. The direct consequences of the "greenhouse effect" are the melting of icebergs, rising sea levels, and the disruption of normal growing conditions for crops and plants, all of which threaten human survival.
4. Crime Issues. Various forms and types of crime have been rampant in both developed and developing countries. Since the 1980s, there has been an increasing trend of internationalization in crime. International terrorism, drug trafficking and abuse, the international trade of women and children, international money laundering and fraud, and international smuggling have all spread along with the internationalization trend of economic growth. Among these, international terrorism has become the most harmful crime activity threatening international society in the 21st century.
5. Population Growth and Unemployment Issues. By the early 1990s, the world population had exceeded 5 billion, while the Earth's limited resources were being consumed bit by bit. The contradiction between population size and resource consumption had become increasingly sharp. At the same time, during the process of economic growth, employed populations were gradually marginalized, a situation that occurred in both developing and developed countries. In the early 1990s, there were 120 million unemployed people worldwide, and 700 million people were underemployed. This situation did not improve in the following decade with the emergence of the new economy but instead worsened. In some developed countries, the unemployment rate remained in double digits, and urban unemployment became a major trigger for other social problems.
6. Religious and Ethnic Conflict Issues. One of the negative consequences of uneven economic growth is that it widens the income gap between people of different religions and ethnicities, leading to regional conflicts under the guise of religion and ethnicity. In developed countries, racial discrimination still exists, and various misleading heresies lead people who have lost their way due to extreme material civilization into illusory realms. In developing countries, religion and ethnicity have become the root of hatred, triggering large-scale ethnic massacres. This situation has become a topic of discussion among political prophets. For example, an American scholar predicted that after the Cold War, civilizations formed based on race and religious culture would mainly include: Chinese civilization, Japanese civilization, Indian civilization, Islamic civilization, African civilization, Latin American civilization, Western Christian civilization, and Russian Orthodox civilization. These civilizations would face the prospect of conflict. Additionally, diseases such as AIDS, SARS, and avian flu have spread with global population movement, raising global public health prevention issues.
From this, it can be concluded that economic development is not a panacea. Economic growth does not automatically achieve social development and progress. Social progress depends on its own development.
II. Humanity Has Accumulated Rich Experiences and Lessons in Development
The emphasis on social development by human society has gone through a long process of recognition. The first to propose that economic growth should meet the needs of human development were socialists. In early socialist movements, utopian socialists proposed various ideas about the development of a better society. For example, in Utopia, social productivity was highly developed, everyone was well-dressed and well-fed, wealth was distributed equally, and society was stable. However, until the founding of scientific socialism, or Marxist theory, human understanding of social development remained relatively abstract and simple. In the 20th century, the pursuit of new social development was replaced by practical social revolutionary struggles. The social development understanding and practice represented by the Soviet Union took place in a completely different social environment from the existing capitalist society. Later, socialism developed from one country to multiple countries. Achieving social development became an important political goal for these socialist countries. The essence of socialism is to use public ownership of the means of production as the foundation, achieve reasonable resource utilization through labor distribution and certain state control, vigorously develop social productivity, and meet the growing material and cultural needs of the people to achieve the right and opportunity for all to survive, enjoy, and develop. In short, promoting social development through economic growth and ultimately achieving the comprehensive development of humanity is inherent in socialism. Although by the 1990s, the basic political and economic systems of some socialist countries had changed, the ideas and ideals of social development that emerged from the socialist movement were widely inherited, forming an integral part of the theory of social development and its management.
Early capitalist societies did not have a comprehensive concept or understanding of social development. Early capitalism, in a sense, relied on sacrificing social development to achieve economic growth. Therefore, for a long time, primarily from the 18th to the 19th century, modern capitalist economic growth did not promote social development but instead brought a series of serious social problems and crises. Only after capitalism tasted the bitter consequences of primitive accumulation and predatory growth without regard for social development did it gradually produce within itself the recognition and practice of emphasizing and promoting social development. The spontaneous actions of the working people in pursuing social development were an important factor in this. Since the 1960s, the issue of social development has frequently been raised on the agenda of governments worldwide. International organizations have also taken action to promote social development and management within their member states. One of the most influential events was the social indicator research that originated in the United States. In the 1960s in the United States, academic organizations and experts first launched social indicator research activities. The definition of social indicators is generally considered to be statistical indicators corresponding to economic indicators. They attempt to the of Western statistics, which had more indicators describing economic activities than social activities, especially aiming to reflect social quality of life and the subjective perception of the public toward the social environment through appropriate indicators for collection and organization. Before the issue of social indicators was raised, Western society relied mainly on the System of National Accounts for data collection and organization regarding national development, and evaluated and judged economic growth based on the core indicator of this system—the growth rate of gross national product or gross domestic product. However, these were insufficient for understanding social development beyond economic activities. Thus, researching a set of social indicators to reflect non-economic activities attracted a large number of scholars and government officials. It can be said that the attention to non-economic development issues is one of the most important reasons for the establishment and development of social indicators.
III. The Role of the United Nations in Promoting Social Development
As the most representative global organization, the United Nations plays a crucial role in promoting social development in countries worldwide. As early as the 1960s, the United Nations had formulated a series of ten-year development plans for the newly liberated third-world countries. Due to the constraints of traditional development thinking, these plans primarily focused on economic growth, making the increase in gross national product the central task of the plan. Social development was severely neglected. By the 1970s, the second series of United Nations development plans faced severe criticism. The main criticism was that due to the serious neglect of social development content, economic growth did not achieve the expected goals. In reality, most developing countries did not improve various aspects of society with the increase in gross national product, resulting in a situation of "growth without development." Some countries even experienced "poverty-driven growth." In light of this, when formulating the second series of ten-year development plans, the United Nations made promoting social development the theme of development. After the end of the Cold War in the 1990s, the United Nations further prioritized social development, including maintaining regional peace, as its main task. To this end, the United Nations held a series of world summit conferences on social development, such as the 1990 World Summit for Children in New York, the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, the 1994 International Conference on Population in Cairo, the 1995 World Conference on Women in Beijing, and the 1995 World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen. The scale and agenda of these conferences were unprecedented in the history of the United Nations and played a significant role in promoting global social development. Among these, the 1995 World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen is particularly noteworthy. As early as May 1991, at the 11th session of the United Nations Economic and Social Council, the Chilean delegation proposed the idea of holding a world summit conference on social development. This proposal was widely accepted by member states. Thus, at the 47th Session of the United Nations General Assembly in 1992, a resolution was adopted, determining that the summit conference would discuss three core issues of social development: strengthening social cohesion, reducing and eliminating poverty, and expanding productive employment. The conference was required to achieve 11 goals, primarily to promote the work of the United Nations in the field of social development; strengthen international cooperation to improve people's living standards; assist in the implementation of social policies suitable for national conditions, formulate implementation targets at national, regional, and international levels; and more effectively help marginalized and disadvantaged groups.
In March 1995, in Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, the first United Nations World Summit for Social Development was held as scheduled. Leaders and experts from governments around the world engaged in extensive exchanges and consultations on the common social development challenges facing humanity as it entered the second millennium. The conference reached consensus on the basic views of the three issues: countries should use more of the fruits of economic growth to reduce and eliminate absolute poverty, and society, especially governments, should take the initiative to help and assist the impoverished population, with developed countries taking concrete actions to assist developing countries in escaping poverty. One of the main causes of poverty is unemployment, and expanding income-generating employment will reduce poverty. It is particularly noteworthy that the unemployment problem in the rich regions of Europe has emerged, and unemployment is a major cause of many social problems. After the end of the Cold War, regional conflicts continued to occur, becoming a major factor in the instability of the world situation. The specific causes of these regional conflicts include racial conflicts, religious disputes, and the presence of illegal immigrants. To maintain world peace, it is essential to promote mutual understanding and communication among various groups, communities, and strata in society, allowing ethnic groups with different values and cultural backgrounds to understand and appreciate each other's traditions and seek common approaches to problem-solving on this basis, thereby avoiding unnecessary bloodshed.
The conference adopted two documents, the "Political Declaration" and the "Programme of Action," requiring member states to refer to these documents for action. Although the 1995 World Summit for Social Development only discussed three issues, along with a series of world conferences on social development held before and after, the United Nations, in the last decade of the 20th century,ed a global high tide in social development issues, playing an immeasurable role in promoting the social development process in countries worldwide.
This book systematically and comprehensively discusses the concepts and principles of national economic management, highlighting the content and key points of national economic management, fully absorbing theoretical research results and practical experiences from China and abroad, and further integrating the experience and knowledge of national economic management in China and abroad at a theoretical level. Moreover, this book uses the latest theoretical research findings and the latest data and statistics in its discussions. These features make this book a textbook that meets the needs of the times. This book can be used as a textbook for students majoring in national economic management and as a reference for a broad readership interested in national economic management.