Nationality and Development: A New Strategy for Catching Up with Modernization

Author: Wen Jun
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features: A New Modernization Catch-up Strategy for Ethnic Minorities and Development, Series of Research on National Conditions. Based on a full affirmation of the comprehensive socio-economic development in ethnic minority areas since the founding of New China, the author systematically analyzes the intrinsic mechanisms of imbalance in these areas. For the first time, it proposes that the development gap between ethnic minority areas and inland Han Chinese areas primarily manifests in three aspects: economic development gap, human development gap, and social development gap. Through research, it is found that the modernization catch-up in ethnic minority areas is a long historical process, and the order of reducing the development gap should be: "social development gap – economic development gap – human development gap." Based on this, the author suggests changing the traditional modernization catch-up strategy in ethnic minority areas, which has focused on GDP growth and natural resource development for the past fifty years, to instead implement a new modernization catch-up strategy that prioritizes "people-centered development, social development first, and investment in people."