The western development and the memory of the third line construction (2)

OA show ('918 '); 3 If the inevitable result of the spontaneous operation of the market is to widen the gap between the East and the west, the reasons and means for the development of the West must be some correction of the market spontaneity That's exactly what happened At the Symposium on the reform and development of state-owned enterprises in the five provinces and regions of Northwest China held on June 17 last year, General Secretary Jiang delivered an important speech on accelerating the development of the central and western regions He pointed out that to gradually narrow the development gap between regions, realize the coordinated development of national economy and society, and finally achieve the common prosperity of all the people, is the requirement of the essence of socialism, and also a major issue related to the overall situation of China's cross century development Also at the meeting, General Secretary Jiang quoted Comrade Deng Xiaoping's thought of "two overall situations" The overall situation is to speed up the opening up of the eastern coastal areas to the outside world so that they can develop quickly and first The central and western regions should take this overall situation into consideration Another overall situation is that when the development reaches a certain period, such as the end of this century when the whole country reaches the well-off level, more efforts should be put forward to help the central and western regions speed up their development, and the eastern coastal areas should also obey this overall situation Equally important, the development of the western region is of great significance for maintaining political and social stability, promoting national unity and safeguarding the security of the border areas In fact, the former is completely consistent with the market economy, while the latter is not the inherent requirement of the market economy Fundamentally speaking, market economy does not consider the overall situation Every market subject only considers the maximization of its interests For the passive receiver of market information, it can only consider the maximization of short-term interests However, the overall situation of the coordinated development of the East and the West involves numerous market subjects, which is the overall situation of "God" beyond the market, the conscious role of "visible hand", and the correction of the spontaneous imbalance of the market mechanism The opposite of the market is planning Conceptually speaking, all adjustments to economic activities from the perspective of overall and long-term interests are planned actions Therefore, the tariff is the plan, the income tax is the plan, the adjustment of exchange rate and interest rate is also the plan, and the legislation, justice and administration are the plans Neoclassicism or neoliberalism opposed all forms of planning and advocated giving up state intervention to the maximum extent This, in turn, shows the planned nature of state action That is to say, as long as there is a country, economic activities must be a combination of planning and market, rather than a complete market economy Developing the west is a national act, therefore, it is also a planned act Unfortunately, the term "plan" has been demonized by Chinese academia People subconsciously equated "plan" with "planned economy", so when they attacked "planned economy", they poured out the rationality of "plan" as bath water Therefore, when people actually use the concepts related to the plan, such as "overall situation", "overall arrangement", "overall consideration", "planning" and "not being able to work independently", they do not know or are unwilling to admit that this is the plan, that is, the "visible hand" opposite to the "invisible hand", that is, the non market behavior However, because the "plan" is demonized and the "market" is deified, people regard the reasonable adjustment of the plan to the market as the market behavior, but criticize the phenomenon originally belonging to the market blindness as the planning phenomenon, resulting in the extreme confusion of people's economic concept For example, the so-called macro-control, in fact, is a planned act, but it is regarded as a market act; while the so-called repeated construction, in fact, is the inevitable product of the spontaneous competition between local governments and private capital as market subjects, but it is criticized as the crime of planned economy -- of course, more accurately, the repeated construction with local governments as market subjects is the blindness of market economy The combination of bureaucratic planned economy On this issue, Comrade Deng Xiaoping once made a very clear statement: "more planning or more markets, not the essential difference between socialism and capitalism Planned economy is not equal to socialism, and capitalism has plans; market economy is not equal to capitalism, and socialism has markets Planning and markets are economic instruments " This means that we can and should boldly admit that the development of the western region is a planned action to correct market failure Of course, planned behavior is not equal to planned economy Planning behavior can be market-based behavior, which is based on grasping the relationship of market elements For example, it is a planned action to carefully put forward the medium and long-term plan for the development and utilization of water resources in the western region, while it is a market action to bid for the development plan section by section; in the bidding process, the bidder's bidding is a market action, and the bid inviter's selection must be a planned action - that is, it is not directed at the maximization of the personal interests of the bidding officials, but the most important one of the national interests To point For example, according to the ecological carrying capacity and the distribution of industrial bases, planning a new map of population distribution in the western region is a planned behavior; according to this, proposing various preferential policies to attract the surplus labor force in the eastern region to move westward is a market behavior; for example, encouraging the newly-built industrial enterprises in the western region to expand the local market and appropriately restrict the sales of Eastern products to the western region is a planned behavior; western enterprises compete with each other to form Competitive companies or groups, this is market behavior In this way, we can form a new type of plan and market relationship based on plan and market, and the western development also has a practical mechanism guarantee In fact, the central committee especially emphasizes the importance of the plan in the development of the West On March 12, 2000, the editorial of the people's daily specially stressed the need to "guide the enthusiasm for development to the guidelines of the Central Committee": "because the development of the western region is the overall situation, the overall strategy and the road of thinking for the national economic and social development, not a local work, it must be subject to the unified deployment of the Central Committee, carried out in a planned and step-by-step manner, and cannot be independent, each has its own way and has its own set Planning and projects, especially major ones, must be incorporated into the long-term planning of the state, with overall consideration and overall arrangement, local interests subordinate to the overall interests and short-term interests subordinate to the long-term interests " That is to say, the western development is a planned act However, the mainstream of academia seems to disagree with this development idea An authority with the dual status of scholar and senior official holds that the central government's limited financial resources and the development of the west "should mainly promote the resources of the more developed regions, foreign countries and overseas resources, and flow more to the West driven by the market, through the reform and improvement of the economic system, expansion of the opening-up to the outside world and expansion of the internal and external resources." This should be a natural diffusion process of economic development, which is different from the "three line construction" factory relocation in the 1960s " I don't know whether this authority really understands the market economy, whether it is driven by the market that the positive sources of natural resources, human resources and capital in the West continue to flow to the East, and whether the natural process of market development is the process of wealth concentration to winners With the development of the market economy, the wealth will drop to the bottom and form a middle class naturally In fact, the formation of the middle class in Europe and the United States is exactly in the cold war At this time, the social movements to curb the spontaneous market forces in various countries are booming, and the economic competition among countries is alleviated due to the common interests of the cold war However, since the early 1970s, with the re intensification of competition between the United States, Japan and Europe, the popularity of new liberalism policies, especially the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc, social movements in various countries have gradually declined, the middle class in European and American countries has sharply shrunk, and the rich and the destitute have all risen in a straight line That is to say, the golden age of capitalism that we admire is precisely driven by anti free market forces Those who advocate the development of the west by market mechanism often refer to the development of the West in the United States A big newspaper once took "using market and interest mechanism to promote development -- Enlightenment of American western development" as its title, and elaborated the main policies in the history of American western development, such as the homestead law of 1862, the encouraging Western tree planting law of 1873, the desert land law of 1877, etc., all of which encouraged Western immigrants to occupy small plots of land for free or with low compensation, in addition to laying railways Land donation, construction of schools, etc promote the development of the vast land in the western United States Although the author states that these experiences only help us to broaden our thinking, their intention is very clear However, I doubt how much the history of American western development can be used for reference to China Although I am also in favor of using the market mechanism to develop the west, the question is whether China's West has enough market attraction As we all know, the western part of the United States in the 19th century was a vast primeval forest, a place where birds and animals came and went, and a place where Indians lived in primitive state Just cutting down the trees and selling the fur there can benefit the people who are going west, let alone get the fertile land at a low price What the U.S government has done is that it only needs an army of ten thousand people to kill Indians everywhere, so that it can control the vast western land and sell it to the people at a low price In fact, the western part of China has experienced thousands of years of development There are too many people in every pleasant land and oasis, and these land and oasis are often faced with serious soil erosion and sand erosion If you don't improve the ecological environment in the west, even if you hand over the Loess and desert in the west, not many people will dare to take over As for the industrial resources in the west, those with economic exploitation value have already been connected with factories and mines Sichuan is a province with good agricultural conditions in the west, but it has already become China's first populous province It can be said that Sichuan has been over developed, rather than waiting for the development of large forests The only area in the West that really awaits immigrants may be the desert Desert is also a resource, where there are at least sufficient light and heat resources As long as there is water, an oasis can be formed, and it is a heaven for tubers to grow However, the development and utilization of deserts should be based on the implementation of the water transfer plan for the western route, the popularization and improvement of desert crop cultivation technology, and the overall planning of desert management, which are not achievable by one household of immigrants In other words, the development of Western China is actually redevelopment The first thing we need is to pay back the historical debts and do a good job in land consolidation and water resource allocation Only on this basis can we talk about building a new West with "economic prosperity, social progress, people's happiness, beautiful mountains and rivers" This means that before market mechanism can be used, large-scale governance plans and corresponding governance projects are needed 4、 What kind of investment project do you choose? With regard to the timing of the development of the western region, many scholars believe that this is the right time The main reason is that China's economy is no longer a shortage economy, but a surplus economy, which needs to expand domestic demand through active fiscal policies Therefore, it is the best time to increase investment in infrastructure in the West For example, during the great depression, the United States invested