In the recently approved Opinions of Shanghai Committee of the Communist Party of China about Raising Shanghai’s Urban Functionality Level and Core Competitiveness Embracing the World and the Future, “comprehensive improvement of governance capacity and more effective system supply” and “obvious improvement of the modernization level of the urban governance system and governance capacity” are written into the overall target, and make “creating a new height in desirable quality life” is one of the key tasks. How is one to understand the relationship between functionality level & core competitiveness and ordinary people? How does Shanghai create a new height in quality life? Jiefang Daily interviewed Li Youmei, member of the Shanghai Decision-making and Advisory Committee, President of the Chinese Sociological Association and First Vice President of Shanghai Academy.
Good life, the key to a city of global excellence
Jiefang Daily: In the Opinions, a new proposition of raising the urban functionality level and core competitiveness of Shanghai has been proposed. How to understand the relationship between this proposition and ordinary people?
Li Youmei: Raising the urban functionality level and core competitiveness of Shanghai is the concentrated expression reflecting the strategic goal of Shanghai’s development in the new era. In my opinion, the fundamental purpose for Shanghai to pursue these targets is to enable people to lead a better life. This is also the original intention that the governing party obeys when making policies and planning: committing to a people-centered approach and regarding the mass’s desire for good a life as the objective of the struggling.
“Embracing the world and the future” mentioned in the Opinions is rather farsighted. It’s not a present, but a future city of global excellence. What will a city of global excellence be like in 2035? Can Shanghai be the benchmark for other global cities at that time? Whether “excellence” in future will bring a better life for people, and how to improve life satisfaction of urban residents, are key questions to the new proposition.
Jiefang Daily: Is it also a significant part of “soft power”?
Li Youmei: Yes, hard power and soft power are complementary. On the whole, raising the urban functionality level and core competitiveness of Shanghai should be considered comprehensively. It not only involves “hard power” in economic and industrial fields, but also “soft power” in law-based social development, democratic process, justice and equality and other aspects of socialism with Chinese characteristics. They are not contradictory, but support each other. The Opinions also mentioned “laying equal stress on soft power and hard power so as to improve synchronously” is the basic principle, which obviously takes mutual support among multiple systems into account.
In general, raising the urban functionality and core competitiveness of Shanghai will provide wider space for improving people’s living standard. People’s realistic appeal and desire for a good life, especially a high-quality life and legal environment, will be the driving force and main mark of city level and core competitiveness.
Establish a more complete public service system
Jiefang Daily: With regard to “creating a desirable new height in quality life” mentioned by the Opinions, what is the connotation of the new height?
Li Youmei: As people pay more attention to quality of life in the new era, strong demand released during the process of improving life quality is one of the driving forces of economic and social development. Shanghai needs to have predictable social policies to create a new high quality life. Quality life is based on a hard environment, but the soft environment is equally important, the most important of which is the relevant policy environment. Quality of life is based on the policy vane. For example, current medical resources and school resources in Shanghai are good, but the operating efficiency is not satisfactory, how is this problem to be solved? Reform should be adopted to innovate existing policies and systems in the new era, so as to raise the efficiency of management and guidance under the current hardware conditions. Another example is the introduction of talents in Shanghai. The relevant policies of enterprises, schools and other units are relatively fragmented, lacking a “package” combination policy, and cannot give clear expectations to talents in terms of treatment and promotion. Some talents go to cities with more definite expectations.
Second is the multi-level and high-level supply of public services. Key words of high-quality life include “high quality” and “life”. Life not only includes family life but also career life and social life. Permanent resident population and migrant population, people in different stratums, the aged and children, residents living in high-end commercial residential buildings and old communities and other different groups have different needs for life quality, so that there is a need to provide differentiated, high quality, forward-looking services. This puts higher requirements on the public service model in general and requires a more complete public service system.
In addition, good legal and humanistic environment and a clean and neat ecological environment are all key to high-quality life. Creating the “Shanghai Culture” brand with unique charm, practicing core socialist values, carrying forward Shanghai spirit of “being tolerant to diversity, seeking excellence, being open-minded and wise, modest and generous”, making good use of red culture, Shanghai-style culture, and Jiangnan culture resources and advantages to enrich people’s spiritual life and to make the city more tolerant and open, is also one of the “soft powers” of Shanghai.
Jiefang Daily: You mentioned “expectation” many times. Is this the key?
Li Youmei: General Secretary Xi always asks a question when on fact-finding visits at the grassroots level: Are you satisfied with your current life? People answer “Yes, I am”. The satisfaction degree is closely related to expectation. People are used to comparing with the past. However, when creating a future quality life, Shanghai should take future expectation instead of today’s satisfaction degree as the coordinate. Harmonious and stable social life order will be an important part of expectation for high-quality life in the future. For example, when a family needs to hire a baby-sitter or an hourly employee, if there is an insurance to protect the interests of both employers and employees, it may increase the reasonable expectation of the two parties to work in satisfaction; a migrant worker in Shanghai needs to rent a house to live, an insurance guaranteeing benefits of the landlord and the tenant also can increase expectation for a stable relationship between them; if there is a relatively definite expectable development channel for the next five years or ten years, a talent introduced to Shanghai will have a higher recognition for and satisfaction level of the city. All these subtle needs actually embody the expectability of social life order, and whether satisfaction of these needs can be expected also influences social mentality and people’ s mental states.
Adhere to the common responsibility
Jiefang Daily: What should the government do in creating a new height in quality life?
Li Youmei: It is necessary to consider how to simultaneously promote economic construction and social construction in a systematic and holistic manner. Absence of proper public services is the biggest challenge to the realization of a better life in the future. Nowadays, the government is rather used to providing basic public services. However, the demand for quality life will be higher in the future and people have updated requirements of the public service supply system. The government needs to think over and explore the system and mechanism for innovating public service supply at the time of transforming original functions with newer concepts and more intelligent imagination.
Specifically, the government needs to face the future, but we must design a set of inter-linked policy systems by centering on “people’s desire for a good life” based on the premise of optimizing and upgrading, integrate the currently fragmentary and single-dimension policy system groups, guide the cultivation of public spirit in order to form a civilized and progressive social life order, and mobilize all kinds of positive powers in the whole society to make common efforts for creating a new height in quality life in the new era. During the process, the government also should attach importance to construction of a social psychological service system, so that the expectations of members of society become more rational.
Jiefang Daily: What are the responsibilities of ordinary people in common construction, shared governance and sharing of society?
Li Youmei: The 19th CPC National Congress clearly proposed to establish a social governance model based on common construction, co-governing, and sharing, and to improve the socialization, rule of law, intelligence, and specialization of social governance. “Good life is created by efforts”. People more and more realize that good life can not be obtained by “waiting, relying and asking”, but through common efforts and assumption of responsibilities. Among them, not only does everyone need to participate, everyone must do their duty, but also people need to remind themselves to have reasonable and appropriate life expectations when confronted with major social contradictions.. They must have a rational and peaceful social attitude and have a consensus of thinking that understands, embraces, and respects one another. Daily social life pays more attention to the principle of negotiation, which means that if people want to obtain honored or respected high-quality life, they need to have public spirit. It is a long process to meet people’s increasing demand for a good life. Therefore, we must adhere to common responsibilities and be prepared for unremitting struggle.
