I read a piece of news today. On March 26th, a senior member of the CDU, one of the ruling parties in Germany, proposed a motion to cancel development assistance to China, which triggered a big discussion in German political circles and media. According to the German weekly Der Spiegel on the 27th, Stefan Kangpeide, an expert on CDU financial issues, said in Parliament on 26th that China is not only a regional power, but also a world power, and should no longer be treated as a developing country. Moreover, the problem of commodity counterfeiting in China has seriously hurt the interests of German enterprises. Therefore, German development aid to China should be cancelled. Kang Peide also said that China should become a member of the G8 and the OECD. China's development assistance should be cancelled during the term of this government. This kind of voice is not the first time in Germany. In mid-February, Koenigs, a member of the German Liberal Democratic Party, also suggested that the government "follow the Japanese example" and stop its development assistance to China, which was echoed by some people in his party. He believes that China no longer needs German development assistance. German aid to China is a "waste of taxpayers' money". We know that Japanese loan assistance to China was cancelled a few days ago. It is said that one of the reasons is that China is now rich and strong. An article in The Economist pointed out that since 1978, China's GDP has grown at an average annual rate of 9.5%, which is three times that of the United States. China may one day replace the United States as the world's number one economy. An article in the American International Herald Tribune predicts that in the near future, the living standard of the people in China will be equal to that of the United States. The New York Times wrote an article entitled "China in 2040": "By 2040, Chinese can be heard everywhere at various scientific conferences held around the world, and Chinese songs on American domestic music charts can also be seen everywhere". Goldman Sachs, a famous American investment bank, predicted. In dollar terms, China's economy will become the largest in the world in the early 1940s. This series of news and data really makes China people feel excited and proud. They are nearly a hundred years behind. We are very proud, and we will say to ourselves that the dragon has begun to fly on the world stage.

But is China really rich and strong? Let's look at another set of data: China accounts for only 7% of the huge US trade deficit. It shows that the influence of China's economy on American economy is not as great as people think. Last year, US exports to Germany and Japan reached US$ 85.7 billion, more than double that to China and India (US$ 40.9 billion). American companies' sales in Germany and Japan are more than six times that of China and India. The United States, Japan and Germany are still the main forces in the current world economy. China's per capita wealth is $9,387, less than 2% of that of the United States. In 2005, China's per capita GDP was $65,438 +0.740, while Japanese GDP had reached $29,600 before 15. In addition, the relative gap of 200 1 per capita public education expenditure is more than 50 times that of Norway, the United States and Sweden. In 2002, the gap of per capita public health expenditure in high-income countries was 8 1 times that of China.

Yes, in recent years, China has made some unprecedented achievements in many aspects, which really excites us in China. However, we should know that the overall level of China is still lower than the world average. The prosperity of a country is the prosperity of comprehensive national strength, which is relative to economy, politics, culture, environment and individuals. From an international perspective, we rank 84th in three areas: population and health, study and work, leisure and welfare. Except for the average life expectancy, infant mortality, adult literacy rate, telephone penetration rate, TV penetration rate and the number of doctors per thousand people, most indicators still have obvious gaps compared with those of middle-income countries.

Our economy has indeed developed and achieved remarkable results, but development is a double-edged sword. As a China native living in the mainland, I saw many worrying things and phenomena in China.

One of the greatest bitter fruits of China's economic development is the destruction of the ecological environment. China has become the country with the most serious soil erosion in the world (Xinhuanet); Desertification land in China devours a big county every year (Henan Daily); The problem of water pollution is serious: more than 300 million people in China do not meet the Hygienic Standard for Drinking Water (Watson); Sandstorms wreak havoc; There is also the ecological crisis caused by the sharp decline of forests (People's Daily) and so on. However, the supervision of our local government departments is weak, and some officials ignore national laws and let the environment pollute for their own interests. The eco-environmental protection department has done a lot of useless work for the whole society. For example, Beijing Daily article "Investing more than 60 billion Huaihe River Water Quality Return to the Origin", what is the origin of water quality in the title? Is that the water quality will reach the peak of pollution again! According to Wuhan Evening News, environmental pollution costs China 283 billion yuan a year. The annual loss of 283 billion yuan is absolutely astronomical, which does not include the harm of environmental damage to human health.

Corruption is becoming more and more serious, and it is still in a period of high incidence. It shows four new characteristics: First, corruption spreads with the spread of public management authority. Corruption is not only manifested in public officials, but also in ordinary citizens bribing public officials; Not only in domestic exchanges, but also in international exchanges; Not only in state organs and public areas, but also in companies, enterprises, schools and private institutions. These different forms of corruption are often interrelated and interdependent. Second, the reform and transformation of the system is an important reason for current corruption. For example, most of the corruption problems in the reform of state-owned enterprises, financial system, social security system and education system are caused by the inadequate design of reform measures and the inadequate cooperation with anti-corruption measures. Third, the anti-corruption system is not perfect. In the system of anti-corruption laws and regulations, there are more documents in the party and less national legislation. Fourth, anti-corruption measures in emerging fields such as banking, securities, insurance, trust, auction, foreign investment, social security and intermediary institutions are obviously backward, which is one of the important reasons for the frequent occurrence of corruption cases in emerging fields in China. Corruption and reform directly affect the national economy and people's livelihood. If corruption cannot be effectively curbed and eliminated, there will be no national development. No matter how rich a country is, it will also drag corruption to extinction. There are many examples in the history of China.

When we go to a city or town casually, we will find many new buildings and high-rise buildings under construction ... This is a common phenomenon in China. The same is true in rural areas. People (rural areas) build houses when they have money, and the old ones are new (even if they can still live). This is a natural thing in China. A foreign friend said that every time I come to China, I find that China has changed a lot, but I feel that China is a big construction site. Or the land of China is full of vitality. Some ambitious local leaders rashly started construction without permission, and then were stopped by the central government, resulting in a large number of occupied land being idle and unable to cultivate. For example, similar to the "Tieben incident" in which the illegal horse was ordered to stop work, the designed production capacity of the project is 8.4 million tons, and the estimated total investment is 654.38+0.059 billion yuan. You can imagine how much waste this project will cause. For example, in the name of building a development zone, a lot of useless work has been done in the construction (CCTV's Focus Interview has done many related reports). Too much manpower and financial resources are wasted. What is more dangerous is that those unfinished buildings and bean curd residue projects leave more hidden dangers to the society. We have built so many buildings, but the house price is so high that an ordinary person vomits blood. Now in a city, an ordinary worker can't afford to buy a house with his hard-earned money all his life. Is this a sign of our prosperity?

The sluggish securities market in China has led to a large amount of funds gathering in the real estate industry, while a large number of private capital in need of financing faces financing difficulties. As a result, a large number of private enterprises went public overseas. Due to the institutional defects of the securities market, China's securities market has become a financial black hole that devours funds, and the whole society has failed to show the demonstration effect that American society has become rich by investing in the stock market. Almost all the investment in China stock market has become a loss effect, and the way to realize social capital accumulation through the stock market is basically blocked. 10 trillion bank deposits can't play their due role, but they have become tigers in cages, which may be our sorrow.

The quality of the education system, on the one hand, directly affects the overall quality of a country's citizens, on the other hand, it also determines the future destiny of a country. As we all know, Japan's rise from the ruins began with education, but China's education system has been questioned from various aspects, such as the industrialization of education, the high fees for education, the heavy burden on primary and secondary schools and so on. Although the whole society is trying to solve the above problems, the effect is very small. The author believes that to solve the education problem, we must first find the source of the problem, that is, the university enrollment system and the employment mechanism of the whole society. Nowadays, schools are calling for quality education all day, but how many schools have really achieved this? In fact, whether it is a school or a parent, the score is still the only criterion to measure a student's quality and determine a person's future. As a person, the most important factors-thought, morality, responsibility and belief-have been mercilessly ignored by modern education, and a group of mercenary groups have emerged in society. On the other hand, the existing employment mechanism in China has deviated from the principle of meritocracy. The current employment mechanism is diploma-only, and the popularity of fake diplomas is evidence. Being a model requires a junior college diploma, and cadres above the department level need a master's degree (a city in Northeast China), and so on. This unreasonable employment mechanism invisibly increases the investment of the whole society in education, wastes a lot of manpower and talents, and even learns things that are useless to oneself and society for almost a lifetime. The direct consequence of this is to increase the burden of society on education and students on courses. Society and families are burdened with high education costs. The life savings of poor families can't afford to send their children to school. The reality is that what students have learned is still being updated by the rapid scientific development. We wasted so much time and invested so much money, but we learned useless and outdated knowledge, such as many useless exams, such as professional title exams, such as English exam-oriented education. Some netizens have written many incisive articles, such as: English has become a huge cancer in exams! ","Missing a lifetime is English "... Now junior high school students and senior high school students are competent for most jobs in society, and they can study while working. Continuous development and continuous charging are the best ways to adapt to social changes. Xu Zhenchao, who set the world record for container handling twice in one year, has only a junior high school diploma, but this does not prevent him from becoming an expert on bridge cranes. And many highly educated people do not necessarily represent high ability. For example, the securities industry in China used to employ returnees with high academic qualifications, but they made a mess of the China stock market, which almost locked the whole society! Doesn't this make us think!

According to the latest survey statistics, 10% wealthy families account for 45% of the total property of urban residents. The lowest income 10% accounts for 1.4% of all residents' property, and another 80% accounts for 53.6% of all property. At the same time, the financial assets of urban residents tend to be concentrated in high-income families. At present, the proportion of the top 20% households with financial assets is about 66.4%, while in the bottom 20% households, the financial assets of each household are only 1.3% of the total financial assets of residents. At present, the Gini coefficient of family property of urban residents in China is 0.5 1, which is much higher than the Gini coefficient of income of urban residents of 0.32. Even so for urban residents, it is conceivable that farmers whose income is much worse than that of urban population. China's current Gini coefficient has exceeded the reasonable range. The serious polarization between the rich and the poor has hindered the stable development of society. The gap between the rich and the poor has become a very serious social problem in China, which has a very harmful negative impact on the safe operation and healthy development of China society. Robert Shiller, a researcher at Yale University in the United States, and Wu Jinglian, a researcher at the the State Council Development Research Center in China, expounded the same view: the biggest risk of a country comes from the polarization between the rich and the poor, which should be solved by adjusting income and strengthening social security.

Judging from the international situation, the East's Japan-China relations, the dispute over the sovereignty of Diaoyu Island, the dispute over Xiao Chun's oil field exploitation rights, and the United States-Japan joint military alliance are all eyeing China, and conflicts seem to be on the verge; In the south, the ruling party in Taiwan Province Province swam to Taiwan independence, approaching the bottom line promised by China again and again, and the cloud of war seemed to be in sight. The dispute between Nansha Islands and other countries has not been completely resolved; In the west, the United States has strengthened its cooperation with India, showing a containment trend towards China. Overseas, China's export products have been repeatedly suppressed and boycotted. Although the status of China people has risen, it has not actually changed. With the sudden change of the international situation, we can only seek constancy in change and stability in instability. Of course, we need to look at everything in change rationally.

The above may be the tip of the iceberg of the problems brought about by social development. If we can't treat it rationally and calmly, our previous steps will stop before the end, and development will be impossible. There are always two kinds of voices in the news media now. One is that China is just a weak country, and China's strength is lower than what people see or hear. China's strength on the world stage mainly lies in its fragile domestic market and favorable investment environment for foreign investors. In other respects, wise countries don't think China is a powerful country. The bigger China's economy is, the greater the risks and problems it faces. There are some thorny problems in China, and it is difficult for China to solve them. Ten o'clock in sogou: China is not worthy to be our opponent; Another voice, as mentioned at the beginning of the article, overestimates the strength of China, which excites us. For the former, I feel confident. We don't have to be angry at their arrogant and contemptuous attitude. Instead, we should be glad that they pointed out the shortcomings and saw the problems in our development. However, it is worth noting that for the evaluation of the latter, we must be self-aware, stay calm, and never be blindly excited. In fact, some "enthusiasm" often hides ulterior motives, which is very harmful to the future development of China. They believe that China, as a vested interest in the current international system, must bear more "international responsibilities"; On the other hand, anti-China forces in some countries are afraid that our country will become powerful, and deliberately create a smokescreen for the people of China, confusing us, making us arrogant and unable to understand the problem rationally, thus hindering our development path.

The ancients said that if there is no near worry, there will be far worry. If we have no sense of hardship now, we will suffer in the future. We should have a clear understanding of the international situation and domestic problems, and be self-aware and confident. Seek and work internationally on the basis of mutual respect; On domestic issues, we should pay attention to the voices of the broad masses of the people and seek ways and means to truly solve the problems. Only in this way can China truly become a prosperous country in the near future.