中国现代经济发展的初始条件

中华民族历史悠久、文化统一,其文化凝聚力和生存延续力的深度是民族复兴、实现现代化的根基。统一的独立自主的社会主义国家的建立,为在一个经济落后、长期分裂的国家进行现代化建设创造了基本的政治前提条件。丰富的劳动力资源、较高的社会整合能力以及社会一体化水平是中国推进现代化的独特的组织资源优势。中国领导人具有强烈的工业化和现代化意识,而且中国作为一个后起的现代化国家,具有诸多的后发优势。但是,中国工业化启动时间晚,经济发展起点低下,工业基础薄弱,物质和资本资源短缺;人口数量多、增长快,城乡差异巨大,各地区发展极不平衡,教育事业落后,医疗卫生条件差,科学技术水平低,缺乏启动工业化的技术创新力量和吸收新技术的能力。由于中国工业化和现代化的初始条件与发达国家差异很大,决定了中国的现代化将是一个由不断量变的积累进而部分质变的长期过程,中国至少要花100年的时间甚至更长的时间才能逐步缩小与发达国家的绝对差距。

Initial Conditions for the Development of Modern Economy in China

The Chinese nation has a long history and unified culture, its strong cultural cohesion and great vitality lay the solid foundation for national rejuvenation and modernization. The founding of a unified and independent socialist state provides the basic political preconditions for the modernization drive in an economically backward country divided for long years. Rich labor resource, marked social integrating ability and a higher level of social integration constitute unique organizational resource advantages for China to promote its modernization. The Chinese leadership has a keen awareness of industrialization and modernization. Further, as a late comer China enjoys many staying advantages in its modernizing endeavors. However, China also has a lot of disadvantages: a delayed start of industrialization, a low starting level of economic development, a weak industrial base, shortages in material and capital resources, a very large and fast-growing population, great difference between town and country, backward education, poor medical facilities, low level of science and technology, lack of innovative technical force to initiate industrialization and weak capability to absorb new technologies. The vast differences between China and advanced countries in the initial conditions for industrialization and modernization determine that China's modernization will be a long process from an accumulative quantitative change to a partial qualitative change. It will take at least one hundred years for China to gradually narrow its absolute gap from the advanced countries.