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Common Prosperity: Education Key to Helping the Needy

Jun 24-2022   



Low-income groups should be put at the core of common prosperity and they can be best helped by a ten-year compulsory education system, said Prof. Yao Yang, Dean of the NSD, in a recent event celebrating the 25-year anniversary of the establishment of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

 

Statistics from a tracking survey by a team of Peking University researchers, of which Prof. Yao is an initiator, showed that the 50% of the population with the lowest income accounted for merely 17% of all residential income in 2016, compared to 35% in the US. The gap in wealth distribution was even starker: the top 10% well-off families had an average wealth pot of 3.33 million yuan, while the 10% on the lowest rung were indebted.

 

Prof. Yao believed that common prosperity is tasked with enabling all residents to enjoy the benefits of economic growth by grooming income-making capability in them and creating income-making opportunity for them. The poor income and wealth distributions mean that much can be done to help the those left behind to catch up with the average income growth of the society.

 

However, the way ahead is not a reversion to the nationalization campaign in 1956, nor is it a simple continuation of cake enlarging over the last 40 years, said Prof. Yao. It’s about how to cut the cake as it gets bigger, said Prof. Yao.

 

To improve everyone’s capability, education is of foremost importance given the critical value of intelligence capital in today’s society, said Prof. Yao. Despite a high percentage of youngsters enrolled in university, a large number of teenagers in the rural areas still don’t attend high schools; of those going on to occupational high schools or technical schools, most are locked in low-income jobs and industries in the rest of their life, according to research by Prof. Yao. 90% of students at occupational and technical schools are from farmer families.

 

Such a glaring educational gap hinders the realization of common prosperity, especially when increasingly more low-end jobs are being taken over by AI and automation. To turn around the situation, Prof. Yao called for ten-year compulsory education, enabling all children to study all the way through high school before deciding on whether to attend university, polytechnic or technical schools, or go straight to work. He urges companies to partner up with occupational and technical schools to ensure that students there learn knowledge and skills in demand.

 

Prof. Yao went on to suggest that China’s basic economic system should safeguard the construction of an efficient and fair society, in which the First Distribution is based on market principles and the Second Distribution is oriented towards socialist goals. He rejected the so-called Third Distribution, which is used by some to refer to corporate donations. Measures such as tax reduction or reputational recognition can be used to encourage entrepreneurs to donate, but above all they should do it on a voluntary basis. Prof. Yao noted that companies account for 60% of all donations in China.

 

Common Prosperity: Education Key to Helping the Needy

Jun 24-2022   



Low-income groups should be put at the core of common prosperity and they can be best helped by a ten-year compulsory education system, said Prof. Yao Yang, Dean of the NSD, in a recent event celebrating the 25-year anniversary of the establishment of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

 

Statistics from a tracking survey by a team of Peking University researchers, of which Prof. Yao is an initiator, showed that the 50% of the population with the lowest income accounted for merely 17% of all residential income in 2016, compared to 35% in the US. The gap in wealth distribution was even starker: the top 10% well-off families had an average wealth pot of 3.33 million yuan, while the 10% on the lowest rung were indebted.

 

Prof. Yao believed that common prosperity is tasked with enabling all residents to enjoy the benefits of economic growth by grooming income-making capability in them and creating income-making opportunity for them. The poor income and wealth distributions mean that much can be done to help the those left behind to catch up with the average income growth of the society.

 

However, the way ahead is not a reversion to the nationalization campaign in 1956, nor is it a simple continuation of cake enlarging over the last 40 years, said Prof. Yao. It’s about how to cut the cake as it gets bigger, said Prof. Yao.

 

To improve everyone’s capability, education is of foremost importance given the critical value of intelligence capital in today’s society, said Prof. Yao. Despite a high percentage of youngsters enrolled in university, a large number of teenagers in the rural areas still don’t attend high schools; of those going on to occupational high schools or technical schools, most are locked in low-income jobs and industries in the rest of their life, according to research by Prof. Yao. 90% of students at occupational and technical schools are from farmer families.

 

Such a glaring educational gap hinders the realization of common prosperity, especially when increasingly more low-end jobs are being taken over by AI and automation. To turn around the situation, Prof. Yao called for ten-year compulsory education, enabling all children to study all the way through high school before deciding on whether to attend university, polytechnic or technical schools, or go straight to work. He urges companies to partner up with occupational and technical schools to ensure that students there learn knowledge and skills in demand.

 

Prof. Yao went on to suggest that China’s basic economic system should safeguard the construction of an efficient and fair society, in which the First Distribution is based on market principles and the Second Distribution is oriented towards socialist goals. He rejected the so-called Third Distribution, which is used by some to refer to corporate donations. Measures such as tax reduction or reputational recognition can be used to encourage entrepreneurs to donate, but above all they should do it on a voluntary basis. Prof. Yao noted that companies account for 60% of all donations in China.