Beyond Growth

Author: Zhao Xiao
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-09-01
Features: I remember that when Japanese scholar Daisaku Ikeda engaged in a dialogue with Toynbee, he mentioned that he would like to live in a historical period of China's Tang Dynasty. However, thanks to the Creator, I was born in the current era of China. This is also the era I would like to be born in. This era is marked by transformation, growth, twists, and hopes, with one prominent feature being the rapid economic growth. I have mentioned in many speeches that growth did not always exist and is certainly not a matter of course. In fact, the history of human economic growth has only been a brief two hundred years. It is closely linked with terms such as the market economy, the Industrial Revolution, and the rise of the West. Even after the world entered the era of economic growth, China was still long excluded from the growth of humanity. From 1900 to 1950, China's per capita GDP actually decreased by 40%! China's true growth occurred just in the past two decades. The Chinese have successfully created a growth record unprecedented in the world, known as the miracle of China's economic growth. I am delighted that such a miracle has occurred, and I believe it is a true miracle that combines concepts such as institutional innovation and technological progress.