China is now in the season of two meetings.
In early March every year, the National People's Congress (NPC) - the
national legislature and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference
(CPPCC) - the national political advisory board - hold their annual meetings.
The two meetings are expected to make a difference this year because the
delegates are faced with a new set of tasks.
If participants in the nation's two most important political meetings can
hold serious debate on the issues on their 2007 agenda, China can reap double
benefits the benefit of having a stronger social program and that of having a
more functional democracy.
Through the years of China's reform (a period of almost 30 years), their
primary focus has been economic - concerns over building and maintaining the
momentum of the nation's development. There were debates, but they were within a
general framework. The concern was that the economy was no longer to be run in
the old ways. It should move closer to the market and far away from all the
unnecessary, if not counterproductive, official meddling.
In recent years, a growing number of issues concerning social development has
been brought to the agendas. The public has come to realize the magnitude of
these issues since the first alarm was heard after the 2003 outbreak of the
deadly epidemic of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), which revealed the
deteriorating conditions of the public health system.
Nowadays, Chinese media can easily list, as many did
last week, the top 10 problems affecting social development, sometimes
characterized as concerns involving the people's general livelihood. 
Since many of the concerns are relatively new to China, it may be hard to
find a base of consensus for building solutions. Participants in the two
meetings need more time to compare notes, define tasks and propose solutions.
So both bodies have longer agendas and longer meeting times this year.
Refreshing discussions can be expected from their debates.
Since everything has an economic side, people can also reasonably anticipate
that, in due time, participants of the two meetings will be capable of
connecting the issues they now face with their time-tested expertise in
transforming the economy.
Most of the issues that the two meetings are going to tackle, inmy opinion,
are fundamentally different sides of one core question: how to spread the
benefit of the economic reform of the past 30 years to all groups and regions in
the country without damaging the economy's strength.
In the most straightforward terms, the core question is whether more money
can flow to low-income groups and underdeveloped regions without unlimited
government spending.
To do that, whether in developing business or in developing education and
health insurance, requires broader participation by people at the grass-root
level, especially those with managerial skills. Only a variety of sometimes
competing programs run by autonomous local organizations can help China achieve
that balance.
Much color has been added to China's economy by the country's small farmers,
small merchants, and small factories. But for social programs, including their
financing, there still have not been many local small organizations in a nation
of 1.3 billion.
Only in the last few months of 2006, for example, was the green light given
to rural credit co-ops and township banks. It is hoped that the two meetings of
2007 will create more room for self-organization initiatives everywhere in
China.
E-mail: younuo@chinadaily.com.cn
(China Daily 03/05/2007 page4)
