Is Common Prosperity a political slogan or a policy agenda?
Themes: “Common Prosperity” as a political slogan, a policy agenda, or something in between—examining its political purpose, its practical implementation, and its impact on inequality and governance in China.
Published: Feb 2026
Editor: Dr. Winnie King, UKNCC Director Quality Assurance and Academic Standards
Assistant Editor: Thomas Pattenden, UKNCC Associate
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Response 1 of 3
Jane Duckett, University of Glasgow
Common Prosperity is more than a political slogan and less than a defined policy agenda. Since 2017, it has become one of the Communist Party’s most important overarching goals for China’s long-term development and a key element of its ongoing efforts to remain in power. As such, Common Prosperity has evolved from a broad ambition to improve livelihoods — and thereby legitimise the regime — to encompass a wide range of policy aspirations including not only reducing regional inequalities, growing the middle class and improving public services, but also fostering an innovative high-tech economy and raising environmental performance as well as increasing social controls and strengthening Party propaganda.
Although Common Prosperity can be traced in the Communist Party’s lexicon back to at least the 1950s, its importance for XiJinping’s political agenda was first signalled in his report at the 19th Party Congress in 2017. At that Congress, Xi consolidated his position as supreme leader and announced a “new era,” a new vision of China’s development, and a new set of goals including “basically achieving Common Prosperity for all” by 2050.
Yet Common Prosperity is more than just an overarching goal for China’s long-term socio-economic development. It also has apolitical objective as part of the Communist Party’s efforts to legitimise and maintain the political system. In July 2021, for example, an authoritative central document noted that Common Prosperity was “not just an economic issue; but an important political issue that relates to the foundations of the Party’s rule.” Xi reiterated this in an August 2021 speech where he also linked promoting Common Prosperity with preventing political polarisation and attaining social harmony. Thus, building on Deng Xiaoping’sapproach of raising living standards to maintain Communist Party legitimacy, the Party under Xi uses Common Prosperity to signal its commitment to delivering benefits for the population as a way of maintaining support. But more than this, the Party has also extended Common Prosperity to include propaganda and social governance initiatives to retain control and suppress opposition.
Although Common Prosperity does not have a defined policy agenda, it has since 2017 been linked to a growing number of policy aspirations. Having started with broad human development, it has subsequently been extended to include economic, cultural and ideological, environmental and social governance policy spheres. In Xi’s report at the 19th Party Congress in 2017, he linked Common Prosperity to promoting “well-rounded human development,” “the well-being of the people” and “social fairness,” and he discussedit in the same paragraph as childcare, education, employment, medical services, healthcare and eldercare, as well as housing, social assistance and poverty alleviation. In October 2020, the Communiqué of the Fifth Plenum of the 19th Central Committee discussed Common Prosperity alongside improving people’s livelihoods and public services, as well as increasing people’s “sense of gain, happiness and security.” It was linked again to employment, education, the social security system, health and the ageing populationas well as to raising incomes – and, in a new development, to “strengthening and innovating social governance” – in other words to increasing grassroots social controls.
Xi’s August 2021 speech on Common Prosperity pushed it up the political agenda but, again, did not refer to specific policies. Instead, it made clear that the goal was reducing regional developmental and income inequalities in pursuit of “high quality development.” It then set out six spheres of Common Prosperity work: balancing regional development; increasing the size of the middle-income group; promoting the equalisation of basic public services; better regulating and adjusting “excessive” incomes; promoting people’s “spiritual life” and culture; and advancing the common prosperity of farmers and rural areas. In each of these spheres, Xi set out many and more specific aspirations for improved socio-economic development, for example, improving transfersfor better regional development, and raising the living standards of migrants and rural dwellers through better education and household registration (hukou) reform, increasing social assistance benefits for the poorest, and improving the supply of affordable housing. He also extended Common Prosperity to include guidance of socialist core values, education in patriotism, collectivism and socialism, a call to strengthen Party ideological and propaganda work.
The spheres of work and broad policy aspirations associated with Common Prosperity have increased further since Xi’s August 2021 speech as evidenced by the range of initiatives planned and developed in the “Zhejiang Common Prosperity Demonstration Zone”(CPDZ). The CPDZ had been established earlier in the year and tasked with “exploring a path” to Common Prosperity. The expectation was that provincial government departments and local governments across Zhejiang would incubate new policy instruments for nationwide replication. Even while Common Prosperity has been less prominent in the speeches of national leaderssince 2021, it has thus continued to evolve.
The CPDZ’s Implementation Programme (2021–2025), published in July 2021, already evidenced an evolution in thinking on Common Prosperity. This lengthy document contained a dizzying array of existing and new policy aspirations, incorporating manythat had not previously been associated with it. First, the Programme differed somewhat from Xi’s speech by prioritising the economy and the “high quality development” context of Common Prosperity, introducing a focus on innovation in science and technology. Second, it introduced new and more detailed policy aspirations, some of which sought to tackle emergent problems. For example, “creating a parenting-friendly society” through public services reflected growing concerns about low birth rates. Third, while the Zhejiang Programme’s human development spheres continued to emphasise reducing income inequalities, public services and coordinated urban–rural development, and the sphere of socialist culture remained, but the Programme included new spheres for the environment and social governance. Here, environmental aspirations included reducing PM2.5 pollution, promoting biodiversity and planning to reduce carbon emissions— plausibly related to improving people’s livelihoods. Some aspects of the social governance sphere, too, aimed at improving wellbeing: reducing occupational and chemical hazards and improving fire safety. But others aimed at reducing popular dissatisfaction, increasing social controls and preventing challenges to the political system: solving conflicts and disputes through mediation, strengthening the Party’s leadership in grassroots governance, and strengthening the Communist Party’s organisation in the platform economy. Thus, Common Prosperity has evolved from an effort to legitimise Party rule by raising living standards to including more controlling or even coercive elements as it seeks to preventpolitical opposition.
Common Prosperity is closely tied to the Communist Party’s efforts to legitimise its rule by improving people’s living standards. As such, it will remain an important overarching goal. But the policies associated with Common Prosperity will continue to evolve as the Party negotiates China’s economic and social development and — most importantly — the political challenges to its rule. In the current context of economic slow-down, housing and real estate market collapse, and local government funding crisis, these challenges are significant, so that the combination of economic and human development policy aspirations with tightening political control is unlikely to change.
Biography
Jane Duckett is Edward Caird Chair of Politics and Director of the Scottish Centre for China Research at the University of Glasgow. She is a Fellow of the British Academy (2016), the Royal Society of Edinburgh(2019), and the Academy of Social Sciences (2019). From 2014–2017 she was President of the British Association for Chinese Studies. She is currently a member of ESRC Council.
Prof Duckett’s early research on the Chinese state under market reform included a book-length study, The Entrepreneurial State in China (Routledge, 1998). Since then, her research has been concerned with Chinese social and health policy. She has argued through studies of social welfare, poverty, unemployment and health policies, that the politics behind them and their enormous redistributive consequences were an important but often overlooked part of the Chinese state’s post-Mao marketising project. Her monograph, The Chinese State’s Retreat from Health: Policy and the Politics of Retrenchment (Routledge, hdbk 2011; pbk2013) drew on comparative political theory to explain the Chinese state’s cuts to health care financing between the 1980s and 2003. She co-edited (with Beatriz Carrillo), China’s Changing Welfare Mix: Local Perspectives (Routledge, 2011), a book that investigated China’s evolving subnational social welfare provision. She has also published papers on the Chinese media’s reporting of health reform, on public participation in policymaking in China, on how health care provision contributes to the Chinese Communist Party regime’s legitimacy and on the influence of international ideas on domestic Chinese policy making.
Response 2 of 3
Xian Huang, Associate Professor, Rutgers University
In 2021, the Communist Party of China (CPC) announced a national goal of achieving “Common Prosperity” for all by the mid-21st century, aiming to reduce China’s mounting wealth and income gaps. The exact meaning of “Common Prosperity” and the specific agenda to achieve it remains vague. Nonetheless, some scholars believe that Common Prosperity essentially refers to continuing to raise people’s living standards and well-being while shrinking inequalities.Specifically, this goal has been interpreted by Li Shi, a Chinese economist, as “three increases and three reductions”,increasing the levels of income, wealth, and social services while reducing the gaps in income, wealth, and social services. I contend that Common Prosperity serves as a political slogan designed to bolster popular support for the CPC. However, it may set the public expectation that the government will take effective measures to mitigate the formidable socio-economic inequalities in China.
From a conventional point of view, the path to Common Prosperity is income redistribution through progressive taxation and social spending. Progressive taxation is manifested in the prevalence of taxes on income, property and wealth, to which the rich are subject to more than the poor. In contrast, progressive social spending is exemplified by a universal and generous welfare state that provides everyone with a safety net, regardless of their income, education, social status, age, gender, and so on. Judging from the conventional political economy perspective, the Chinese government’s efforts for income redistribution in the recent decade are modest.
On the taxation side, there is no substantive progress in the long-awaited adoption and promotion of property taxesnationwide. Meanwhile, the threshold for the personal income tax was raised in 2018 from RMB 3,500 to RMB 5,000 per month and generous deductions were introduced in 2019 that further cut tax receipts.
On the social spending side, social insurance benefits (i.e., pensions, health insurance) have been increased, contributingto a shrinking gap in disposable income disparities. However, their role in reducing the income gap and socioeconomic inequality has been modest, because of the limitations of benefits and coverage. At the same time, citizens’ social insurance contributions (e.g., pension/health insurance contribution bases or amounts), set at a flat rate or fee across income groups, have increased. That means the poor must pay a higher share of their disposable income than the rich to receive the same social insurance benefits. As such, the Chinese social insurance system is regressive and has limited redistribution effects.
Given the relatively modest redistribution efforts through the above conventional channels, one might question whether the CPC’s drive for Common Prosperity is merely a political slogan aimed at bolstering popular support for its rule rather than an effective income redistribution. To reevaluate this claim, it is useful to examine the trends of income inequality in China over time. Based on economists’ estimates using Chinese data between 2003 and 2019, the Gini index increased sharply, peaking around 2010. It has declined and remained at around 0.47 since 2013. A key factor behind this “plateau” or “turnaround” in Chinese income inequality is the CPC’s redistribution efforts drawn on its familiar political repertoires, such as bureaucracy, mass mobilisation, and state control.
Closely associated with the Common Prosperity goal is the Targeted Poverty Alleviation (TPA) campaign led by the CCPfrom 2013 to 2020 under Xi Jinping’s leadership. TPA differs from previous poverty alleviation programs in the heightened monitoring pressure and the massive mobilisation of financial resources and local officials to eradicate extreme absolute poverty. At the end of this unprecedented anti-poverty campaign, the CPC proclaimed that China realised a “moderately prosperous society” (xiaokang shehui) by successfully moving more than 99 million rural residents above the country’s official poverty line. There is evidence indicating that the urban-rural income gap has been narrowed in China during the second decade of the 2000s; so has the regional economic disparity between coastal and inland regions. The TPA campaign and some regional development strategies (e.g., “Revitalization of the Northeast,” “Western Development Strategy”) with a noticeable focus and priority on providing fiscal transfers, bureaucratic mobilisation, and business support to China’s western and poor inland provinces must have contributed to these favorable results. However, inequalities within urban and rural populations and within provinces have become more prominent compared to those across urban and rural populations and across coastal and inland provinces, revealing the limitations of relying on top-down mass mobilization of bureaucratic and fiscal resources to drive Common Prosperity.
In addition, the CPC undertakes coercive measures towards some firms or sectors to reduce economic inequality, at least the perception thereof. Examples in this regard include the long-lasting anti-corruption campaign, tightened regulations on the real estate market, stricter enforcement of current tax law to curb excessive tax evasion, and extensive censorship on social media celebrities “flaunting wealth” or prompting debates about absolute poverty. The state mediahas consistently avoided acknowledging the extreme concentration of wealth at the top-end income groups, despite the fact that wealth inequality has become one of the most significant contributors to economic inequality in China. Notethat wealth inequality is more opaque and more severe than income inequality, as over time, high income translates into wealth that grows faster than income and accumulates across generations. However, the leadership has so far been unwilling to take decisive measures, such as an estate or property taxes, to address it in any significant way that would threaten the interests of the most privileged segments of society.
Under China’s “new normal” (xin changtai) since 2013 characterised by slower economic growth, industrial upgradingand restructuring, and radical technological changes, the distribution of income and wealth has become more complex. When the pie to share is not growing bigger, how to divide the pie becomes the focus of contestation. As discussed above, some social inequalities or cleavages (e.g., urban-rural and coastal-inland gaps) are mitigated while others are intensified (e.g., within-region inequality) or maintained (e.g., income/class inequality). The large disparities in resources across regions, generations, and economic sectors within the country have provided an opportunity for the central state to temporarily address the inadequate and uneven provision of public goods and social services by leveraging certain cleavages over others. A prominent example is the national pooling of provincial pension funds for enterprise employees in 2022, and the increase in the retirement age for younger people in 2025 to mitigate the insolvency of public pensions.In the long term, however, whether and how all classes, generations, and regions can achieve “Common Prosperity” within the current political framework to meet public expectations remains an open question. After all, the realisation of Common Prosperity depends on who is considered part of the ‘common’ by the regime.
Biography
Xian Huang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Rutgers University and is affiliated with the Rutgers Center for Chinese Studies.
Xian Huang’s research interests include (1) political causes and consequences of social inequality, stratification, and (im)mobility; (2) redistribution, social welfare, and health policies; (3) public opinion and preferences under authoritarian rule. The regional focus of her research is China and East Asia.
Xian Huang received a PhD of Political Science from Columbia University. She received BA degrees in Political Science and Economics, and a MA degree in Political Science from Peking University (Beijing, China). Before joining Rutgers, she was a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for the Study of Contemporary China at University of Pennsylvania.
Response 3 of 3
Zhao Jianglin, Senior Research Fellow, Deputy director, Institute of European Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
For China, Common Prosperity is not merely a political slogan, but a concrete policy agenda. Political slogans are primarily used to promote governance concepts whilst policy agendas involve the actual implementation of public policies. China’s pursuit of Common Prosperity is an ongoing process of realisation. If Common Prosperity remains confined to rhetoric, it will be difficult to have a clear understanding of China’s development and even more impossible to grasp China’s policies and practices.
In China, Common Prosperity represents a long-term visionary goal. Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, it has been a central objective pursued consistently by successive generations of Chinese leaders. In the 1950s when China was still in the state of “poverty and blankness”, Mao Zedong emphasised that the country needed to become “much more developed, much more prosperous, and much stronger…This prosperity is Common Prosperity, and this strength is common strength. Everyone has a share.” Following China’s reform and opening-up, Deng Xiaoping declared on many occasions, “Poverty is not socialism. The greatest strength of socialism is that it enables all the people to prosper, and Common Prosperity is the essence of socialism”. He stressed, “(…seeking Common Prosperity) will surely be the central issue someday. Socialism does not mean allowing a few people to grow rich while the overwhelming majority live in poverty. No, that’s not socialism”. Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Xi Jinping has reiterated: “Achieving common prosperity is a defining feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics and involves a long historical process. The immutable goal of our modernization drive is to meet the people’s aspirations for a better life. We will endeavor to maintain and promote social fairness and justice, bring prosperity to all, and prevent polarization”. Clearly, Common Prosperity has long been a guiding philosophy and a key governance goal for Chinese leadership. Even if initially introduced as a political slogan, a vision adhered to for over 70 years cannot be reduced to mere propaganda.
Common Prosperity is also a deep-seated social structure. Although different people may feel and experience it differently, the concept has become embedded in the national consciousness. Over almost five decades of reform, opening-up with a combination of the persistent efforts made by the Chinese people and the Chinese government, GDP per capita has risen from USD $307 in 1980 to USD $13,312 in 2024, the average annual growth rate during the same period was 8.07% according to IMF statistics. China’s People have gained faster income growth, more paths to prosperity and better career choices from the reform and opening up and are willing to strive for a better vision of high-quality life. They are more concerned about major decisions and plans concerning the national development and actively offers their suggestions. During the period from May to June in 2025, a total of over 3.113 million suggestions from Chinese netizens regarding the formulation of the 15th Five-Year Plan were received. These suggestions build a bridge of continuously integrating the voices of the general public regarding employment, education, healthcare, child care, elderly care, housing, the environment and other personal, intimate and specific matters into the top-level design of national development, and ultimately transforming them into their sense of gain, happiness and security.
Common Prosperity is grounded in concrete policy planning. Till now, the Chinese government has consistently formulated a total of 15 Five-Year Plans aimed at achieving Common Prosperity. The five-year plans are China’s most important medium- and long-term planning tool, all of which have helped drive China’s economic and social development, increase its composite national strength, and raise people’s living standards. For instance, in 2024, China’s basic medical insurance covered 1.364 billion people, with participation rates remainingabove 95%. This system has been established and gradually improved by the Chinese government to compensate for the medical expenses of insured individuals since December 1998, playing a role in enhancing the accessibility of basic medical and health services, effectively reducing the medical expenses burden on residents, and lowering the risk of “falling into poverty or returning to poverty due to illness”. It has been the world’s largest basic medical security network.
Common Prosperity is achieved through a process of practice. As prosperity is meant for all people, it must be achieved through collective diligence, hard work, and creativity. With the elimination of absolute poverty by the end of 2020, China has successfully achieved its first centenary goal of the founding of the Communist Party of China (1921-2021) to build a moderately prosperous society in all respects. In August 2021, the 10th meeting of the Central Committee for Financial and Economic Affairs proposed promoting Common Prosperity through high-quality development, signaling its entry into a comprehensive implementation phase. Since that, China has started the newjourney of striving for Common Prosperity for all in new path that is to promote the transformation of the economic development mode. Some provinces have actively begun pilot programs for Common Prosperity. For instance Zhejiang Province, designated as a demonstration zone for common prosperity in 2021, had continued to narrow the gap of the disposable income per capita ratio between urban and rural residents to 1.73 by the end of the 3rd quarter of 2025, from 1.83 in 2024 and 1.86 in 2023; demonstrating notable progress of the catch-up of the rural income per capita compared to urban income. Empirical studies also suggest a narrowing of gaps between regions, between urban and rural areas, and across occupational incomes, indicating that China’s pursuit of Common Prosperity is well underway. In March 2025, Xi Jinping urged an economic powerhouse in east China, Jiangsu Province, to play a major role in the country’s overall development.
In addition, it is essential to understand the nature of China’s Common Prosperity. Firstly, it must be accurately interpreted. China’s concept of Common Prosperity neither moves to bring prosperity to everyone simultaneously, nor to see that regions reach a certain level of affluence all at the same time. Different groups of people vary not only in terms of the level of prosperity they can potentially achieve, but also the length of time they need to achieve it. Furthermore, it would be impossible to develop all regions at the same pace because of the gaps in wealth that still exist between them. Secondly, it is a long-term, challenging, and complex goal that requires patience and persistence. In October 2021, Xi Jinping proposed the need to conduct in-depth research on goals at different stages and promote Common Prosperity in a phased manner:
“By the end of the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021–2025), we will have made solid progress toward bringing prosperity to all, while gaps between individual incomes and actual consumption levels will gradually narrow. By 2035, we will have made more notable and substantive progress toward Common Prosperity, and equitable access to basic public services will be ensured. By the middle of this century, Common Prosperity will be basically achieved, while gaps between individual incomes and actual consumption levels will be narrowed to an appropriate range”.
Lastly, attention must be paid to the challenges in achieving this goal. For China’s aims to address uneven and insufficient development it must also contend with pressing social concerns, including promoting social fairness and justice and advancing holistic individual development.
For thousands of years, the Chinese people have been dreaming of a moderately prosperous society. Based on historical and other countries’ governance experience, the choice to lead the Chinese people to realize this dream shows the political wisdom of the Communist party of China (CPC) and will surely be high on the CPC’s action agenda. Today’s China is striving to achieve its second centenary goal (1949-2049) which calls for building into a modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious and beautiful and reaching the level of moderately developed countries in 2049.
Biography
Zhao Jianglin is the Senior Research Fellow, the Deputy Director of the Institute of European Studies, CASS, the Vice President of the China-CEE Institute, the Vice Chairman of the Information Society, CASS and the Council member of National Hong Kong and Macao Research Council. She was the temporary Deputy Director-General of Bureau of International Cooperation, CASS, with the Institute of Asia-Pacific and Global Strategy, CASS as the director of the International Economic Relations Department and doctoral supervisor and also a visiting scholar at the Asian Economic Research Institute, the Intellectual Property Research Institute of Japan and Columbia University in the United States. Her research interests are world economy and international economic relations. She is the author of “Research on the Belt and Road Initiative and the Construction of the World Economic System” and “The Rise of China and the Construction of the Asian Regional Market”, co-editor of several Sino-foreign joint research reports, executive editor of several editions of the “Belt and Road” Handbook, and the editor of the CASS key textbook, “Introduction to Asia-Pacific Economy”.
