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中國是否正在發展一種新的文明模式？

(2024-07-31 07:12:48) 下一個

中國是否正在發展一種新的文明模式？

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016328721001890?

曹世雄 a，夏成奇 b，索新浩 c

要點
• 中國的做法提供了一種可供其他國家效仿以促進發展的模式。
• 中國最近的經濟做法基於共享財產的新概念。
• 共享財產意味著工人共享企業的所有權，當他們不再為企業工作時，將返回。

摘要

正如新枝從老樹上長出來一樣，人類文明的發展建立在先前製度的基礎上。目前，關於哪些製度將從資本主義中產生並可能取代資本主義存在很多爭論。在本文中，我們描述了一種新的所有權模式，我們稱之為共享財產。與資本主義的私有製和社會主義的公有製不同，新的共享產權概念意味著，那些參與推動企業成功的人相當於企業的共同所有者，並從企業的成功中獲益。但是，當這些員工離開公司時，他們的所有權份額將返還給企業，並獎勵給未來的員工。由於新的產權製度可以最大限度地發揮員工的積極性，它為未來社會經濟增長提供了新的引擎，並帶來了結合資本主義和社會主義優勢的重大製度變革。

Is China evolving a new model for civilization?

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016328721001890?

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Highlights

• China's approach provides a model that can be emulated by other countries to promote the development.

• China's recent economic approach has been based on a new concept of shared property.

• Shared property means that workers share ownership of an enterprise while returned when they no longer work for the enterprise.

Abstract

Just as new branches grow from old trees, human civilization develops by building on previous institutions. Currently, there is much debate over what institutions will emerge from and possibly replace capitalism. In this paper, We describe a new ownership model that we call shared property. In contrast with the private ownership that characterizes capitalism and the public ownership that characterizes socialism, the new shared property concept means that those who participate in driving an enterprise’s success are comparable to co-owners of that enterprise, and benefit from its success. However, when these employees leave the company, their share of the ownership is returned to the enterprise and awarded to a future employee. Because the new property rights system can maximize employee enthusiasm, it provides a new engine that will drive future socioeconomic growth and lead to a significant institutional change that combines the advantages of capitalism and socialism.

1. Introduction

Since 1978, a series of economic reform and opening to the West policies have promoted China's rapid rise in many social and economic fields. As a result, China has begun to play an increasingly important role in international affairs. However, the government has always insisted that it will stick to the socialist road, leading to a puzzling paradox (Li, 2004; Zhai, 2019): How did China achieve such great economic success without fundamental changes in its political system? Over the past 40 years, Chinese and foreign scholars have conducted a great deal of research on this issue, and have proposed explanations that include factor endowment (Henri, 2019), improved management of human capital (Fleishe, Li, & Zhao, 2010), development of a competitive advantage (Porter, 1991), management of the country’s endowment of natural resources (Hilmawan & Clark, 2019), and economic institutions (Robinson, Daron, & Simon, 2005). However, no fully convincing explanation has been offered, and solving the riddle of China’s institutional change remains a major challenge in the field of political economy.

In contrast with traditional capitalism and the former Soviet Union’s type of socialism, China is exploring a new development path within a new social system. That system retains the effective elements of a centrally planned economy and a market economy, but is beginning to incorporate new production relationships that are more suitable for the interests of knowledge workers such as scientists, engineers, and computer programmers. This effective combination of the old and new systems has avoided political turmoil similar to what occurred during the breakup of the former Soviet Union, has maintained social stability, and has promoted social and economic progress and development. Through reforms that support this innovation, China has gradually stepped into a new stage of social development that is different from traditional capitalism and Soviet socialism. Under the joint action of three systems (public ownership, private ownership, and the new shared ownership), China’s economic miracle has emerged.

The new system has been very effective in high-tech enterprises and the knowledge-based economy, and is now an important force driving the rise of China. The associated institutional change represents a major change in social production relationships, and suggests that Chinese society is entering a new stage of development. Although this institutional reform is not yet complete, the effectiveness of the new system is already clear. It is the inevitable result of human social development that intellectual labor replaces physical labor and that the knowledge economy replaces parts of the traditional industrial economy. If all countries could learn from China’s example to promote the development of their knowledge economy through similar institutional innovations, human social development would be greatly accelerated.

The definition of property rights is an important foundation for social evolution and is a symbol of social civilization (Coase, 1959). Unlike the French bourgeois revolution of 1789, the Chinese institutional change that occurred in 1978, led by Deng Xiaoping, was so gentle that both domestic and foreign scholars underestimated its significance. In this paper, We will explain why China’s reforms and opening up to the West under Deng represents a rejection of millennia of civilization dominated by a small number of society’s elite and has solved an important part of the problem of how to promote innovation in the knowledge economy. Although the evolution of China’s new system is not complete, it shows signs of leading China into a new stage of social development.

2. The emergence of shared property rights

Institutional change in China resulted from a series of property rights innovations, including the restoration of the private property rights and competitive markets that were abolished by Mao Zedong after the Chinese Revolution. China’s new approach preserves the system of collective property rights established by Mao and retains government control of non-competitive sectors (including government monopolies such as the electrical power, railway, and energy source systems). However, there have also been disruptions of the old system. Specifically, the shared property rights system, which has been primarily adopted in the field of high technology and new technology, represents an innovative combination of collective ownership with private property rights. In this system, specific employees (mostly scientists, engineers, and computer programmers) become partial owners of the company and share in its income growth; however, when they leave the company, they return their share of ownership to the company.

China’s complex combination of institutions did not suddenly arise; it developed through a gradual trial-and-error approach with the ultimate goal of achieving a win–win solution that achieves both political stability and economic growth. China’s institutional evolution works by retaining key aspects of the old institutions (or changing them slightly) until new institutions become sufficiently strong to replace or improve the old institutions. For example, China’s rural society changed rapidly from 1978 to 1980, but the urban society remained relatively stable. In addition, when a market-based system emerged in the 1980s, allowing competition among companies, the state-owned enterprises that were controlled by the government’s central planning system changed little while private enterprise surged in the private sector. When shared property rights emerged in 1994, the old institutions changed little and coexisted with this new institution. These gradual changes represented evolution and coexistence of the new and old systems rather than revolution.

2.1. Restoration of the system of private property rights

In 1978, Deng Xiaoping drew lessons from the failures of the People’s commune system under Mao Zedong and allowed peasants to operate independently on contracted land (i.e., land owned by the government but managed by farmer collectives), while retaining state ownership of the land and other natural resources. This system was equivalent to the restoration of peasants as sharecroppers. Although that wording makes the system seem like a throwback to older times, it actually corrected the mistakes that were made during the People’s commune period, when the government told farmers what crops to grow and what productivity must be achieved, even if those instructions were unrealistic. Since the new approach eliminated government bureaucratic positions such as the village accountant, cashier, custodian, village head, and secretary, the cost of agricultural production fell. Since farmers also decided what crops would work best in their area and were not forced to meet unrealistic production targets, crop yields and profits both increased. As a result, this reform was successful right from the start of its implementation.

In contrast with the traditional feudal society, Chinese farmers after 1978 no longer had to pay land rent to a landlord after paying agricultural taxes, so the burden on farmers was lower than the burden on traditional tenant farmers. They also shared a form of land ownership by having the freedom to determine how the land would be used. After paying state taxes, all the surplus income belonged to the farmers, which provided a powerful incentive to both innovate and work harder. As a result, China’s grain production increased from 304 Mt in 1978 to 669 Mt in 2020, and other crops benefited similarly (National Bureau of Statistics, 1979-2020; National Bureau of Statistics, 1979).

After successfully completing the reform of rural land property rights, the Chinese government allowed the urban unemployed, migrant farmers, and foreign businessmen to start private business activities in cities, and this approach gradually expanded from commercial to industrial sectors. The 1980s saw the emergence of private-sector enterprises such as private workshops and private enterprises in Chinese cities. This non-public component of the economy promoted the rapid development of a market economy and subsequent reform of China’s market economy. For example, the government’s primary role in the marketplace and the stock market has been to enforce a series of laws that are designed to prevent financial crime. And the private-sector (including enterprises that issued stocks) decided what to produce and sell, and shared the benefits that remained after state taxes.

The private sector grew rapidly. In 1978, there were no private enterprises. By 2019, the number of registered individual businesses reached 25.3 × 106. The urban private sector employed 262.6 × 106 people, accounting for 59.3 % of the urban employed. The GDP of privately owned enterprises reached 88.1 × 1012 RMB, accounting for 87.0 % of the national economic output (Fig. 1). The private sector has therefore emerged as a major force driving China’s economic growth. The great success of the private sector increased Deng Xiaoping's confidence in market-oriented reform, which has continued to the present day.

2.2. Reform of state-owned enterprises

After the success of the rural institutional change, Deng Xiaoping confirmed in 1992 that the private sector would become an important part of the socialist economy. The Third Plenary Session of the 14th Communist Party of China Central Committee, held in November 1993, approved “Decision on Several Issues Concerning the Establishment of a Socialist Market Economy System” and proposed that “establishing a modern enterprise system with clear property rights, clear rights and responsibilities, separating government from enterprise, and scientific management” would be the direction for reform of state-owned enterprises, and state-owned enterprises then embarked on the road to market-oriented development. Although the state-owned enterprises still followed central government planning, the goals were more flexible and allowed the enterprises to compete more effectively in the new markets.

The emergence of the private sector not only drove the rapid development of China’s economy, but also competed with the traditional state-owned and state-managed economy. Since 1995, the proportion of state-owned enterprises shutting down has been increasing, resulting in nearly 5000 state-owned enterprises shutting down completely every year. From 1995–2019, a total of 57.9 × 106 employees of state-owned enterprises were laid off, and these workers became private-sector employees (National Bureau of Statistics 1994–2020). With the exception of monopolistic industries and industries related to national security (such as the electrical power, railway, energy source, and banking systems), the state has gradually withdrawn from economic activities in sectors where it was believed that private sector competition would improve efficiency and productivity.

Competition from the private sector has caused the proportion of the national GDP contributed by the public sector to decrease. In 1985, individual businesses accounted for only 3.0 % of China's industrial and commercial tax revenues, but this increased to 56.9 % in 2019. In 1978, there were 95.14 × 106 urban workers, accounting for 99.8 % of the employees of state-owned enterprises. In 2017, there were 4.42 × 106 urban workers, of which 12.4 % were employed by state-owned enterprises (National Bureau of Statistics 1979–2020).

2.3. Emergence of the shared property rights system

To develop a technology industry, the Science and Technology Bureau of Shenzhen issued a policy to encourage scientists and engineers to develop innovative technologies and share in the profits earned by these innovations and a policy to share the profits from technological innovation in 1994. In this approach, Shenzhen redefined technology as an enterprise’s capital stock. These policies encouraged companies to let scientific and technological personnel participate in planning of the activities of an enterprise and sharing the resulting profits to promote innovation. The goal was to promote technological innovation by providing institutional incentives rather than by government funding of enterprises to upgrade the industrial economy. The new policies made Shenzhen one of the most famous cities in the world for innovation. Shenzhen is the first city to test this approach, but will not be the last. The results of this change affected more than 90 % of researchers, consumed more than 90 % of the available research funds, and produced more than 90 % of the technical invention patents registered by the new enterprises (Zhou, 2021). These results encouraged enterprises (but not universities and research institutes controlled by the central government) to participate in the new institutional arrangement of shared property rights. These incentives are becoming increasingly familiar to managers of China’s private enterprises and are driving technological innovation.

The essence of the revolutionary new property rights system is that by appraising technology as a capital stock, this approach provides powerful incentives to scientists, engineers, and other knowledge workers to innovate in ways that improves their employer’s profitability. In addition, as co-owners of the company for as long as they remain employed, these workers also gain the right to participate in management of the company. Typically, companies hold a meeting every year at which their researchers and engineers vote on what products to develop and what features those products should have, and then everyone votes on whether to accept these suggestions.

Previously, it was only possible to own shares of a company through the stock market or other investments in an enterprise’s capital (e.g., loans), and this participation entitled investors to earn a share of the enterprise’s profits in the form of dividends. These investments remained the property of investors until they sold the investments to another investor. However, in the new shared property rights approach, a company’s knowledge workers (e.g., scientists, engineers) invest in an enterprise by applying their skills to increase the enterprise’s profits, and are rewarded with a share of the profits. However, unlike traditional Western forms of investment, shared property rights cannot be transferred or inherited, and disappear automatically when an employee leaves the enterprise. Although this doesn’t benefit employees who leave the company, it greatly benefits the company by retaining the funds for use by the company, thereby providing capital that can be reinvested in the company to promote its growth.

Although the present form of the system only rewards a company’s scientists and engineers, both new students and existing workers (through continuing education) can become scientists or engineers, which allows them to obtain the “knowledge capital” they need to negotiate with “financial capital” on an equal basis. In addition to earning wages, these workers also earn the right to a share of their employer’s surplus value. These workers are no longer physical sellers of their services who lack a voice in the company’s operation, but instead become masters who can directly participate in corporate decision-making, thereby promoting the company’s interests. This replaces the older system, in which only investors (i.e., financial capital) enjoyed the surplus value.

Shared property rights solves a significant problem with previous systems: a traditional hourly wage or a piecework wage cannot measure the productivity of mental labor. However, when that labor improves a company’s profits and employees share those profits, the workers responsible for the innovations that led to that improvement will benefit more from their work. For example, Ren Zhengfei invested only 21 × 104 RMB to establish Huawei in 1987. The engineers who joined the company had no share in the company until 1994, after which, without contributing any capital other than their mind, they increased their share of the company to 99 % in 2019 as more and more researchers and engineers participated in the shared property regime. In 2019, the company had grown into a large multinational enterprise with 19 × 104 employees and annual revenue of more than 850 × 109 RMB. In addition to the salary they earned, each engineer received an average bonus of 1 million RMB in 2019.

Today, Huawei has become one of the leaders in the global telecom industry. During the same period, all Chinese high-tech enterprises grew rapidly through their use of the shared property rights system, or a combination of shared property rights and private ownership. In doing so, they gradually became the leaders of China’s economic development. In 2018, the total size of China's digital economy reached 31 × 1012 RMB, which was equivalent to 34.8 % of China’s GDP in that year (National Bureau of Statistics 1979–2020). Companies that have achieved wise management, good luck, and prosperity through shared property rights are referred to as “unicorn enterprises” in China. In 2016, there were 35 Chinese unicorn companies, compared with 96 in the United States, but these numbers grew to 233 Chinese companies and 227 American enterprises in 2020 (Table 1). Other major countries have much smaller numbers of these companies.

Table 1. Growth in the number of “unicorn” enterprises (companies that benefited from wise management, good luck, and prosperity) from 2016 to 2020.

Empty Cell	China	USA	England	India	South Korea	Germany	France	Japan	Total
2020	233	227	24	21	11	10	7	3	515
2019	206	203	13	21	6	7	4	2	494
2018	205	149	15	13	6	8	3	1	429
2017	59	109	14	10	2	3	2	1	233
2016	35	96	3	5		6			173

3. Economic principles behind the new Model

The private ownership that characterizes capitalism shares benefits as follows based on costs (C) and net benefits (NB): $P r o d u c t i o n v a l u e = \sum_{i = 1}^{n} C_{i} + \sum_{i = 1}^{l} {N B}_{i}$ where $\sum_{i = 1}^{n} C_{i}$ includes all costs of economic activity (for example, worker salaries, costs of raw and processed material, losses during production and sales, taxes, and transaction costs) for n costs and $\sum_{i = 1}^{l} {N B}_{i}$ includes the net value of the enterprise’s activities for l activities. Karl Marx (1818–1883) described the latter term as the surplus value enjoyed by financial capital.

In contrast with the private ownership system, the shared property system provides not only capitalism’s net benefits, but also a new shared benefit (SB): a share of the profits. The knowledge workers not only earn salaries, as in traditional capitalism, but also earn a share of the net benefits: $P r o d u c t i o n v a l u e = \sum_{i = 1}^{n} C_{i} + \sum_{i = 1}^{l} {N B}_{i} + \sum_{i = 1}^{l} {S B}_{i}$ where $\sum_{i = 1}^{l} {S B}_{i}$ is an increased new net value that is created by the knowledge workers. Because the $\sum_{i = 1}^{l} {N B}_{i}$ in model (2) > the $\sum_{i = 1}^{l} {N B}_{i}$ in model (1), and $\sum_{i = 1}^{l} {S B}_{i}$ > 0 in a company that is earning profits, the new institution should be welcomed both by the capitalists and by the knowledge workers.

In the new system, $\sum_{i = 1}^{l} {S B}_{i}$ represents the new and increased benefit created by the knowledge workers in addition to $\sum_{i = 1}^{l} {N B}_{i}$ because the efficiency of labor is increased by the new institutional incentives. Therefore, the evolution of this method does not eliminate traditional capitalism, but rather adds to and improves the old system, and will gradually decrease the old system’s role in the economy. For example, Ren Zhengfei, the founder and current leader of Huawei, owns only 1 % of his firm; the rest is owned by employees in the form of shared property. The company has no “stocks” that are publicly traded in a stock market; instead, its knowledge workers benefit from their shared ownership of the company.

Just as a tree grows new branches in the spring, while retaining its old branches, new institutions emerge from and coexist with the old ones. Instead of completely rejecting capitalism or completely overthrowing socialism, China has developed its innovative shared property rights system while retaining the old system. As Buzan and Cox (2013) note, this represents peaceful economic competition mixed with cooperation (i.e., coopetition). The result is a more gradual change (co-evolution rather than revolution) that smooths socioeconomic development by minimizing conflict between the old and new systems. At the start of this evolution, China maintained strong central control of the economy, while allowing market-based economic activity to emerge and grow (Whyte, 2009).

Currently, all China’s high-tech enterprises (except universities and institutes that are controlled by the central government) use some form of shared property system. Most of these companies are involved in knowledge industries (e.g., telecommunication, computers, design of consumer products). Like the quiet spring rainfall, the changes in China are gentle and easy to miss. This is the essential feature of China’s institutional reform and offers a good example for human society to follow.

4. Achievements

After the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the Chinese government confiscated all private assets and formed a state-owned property rights system dominated by public ownership of all resources. Unfortunately, this led to the majority of the Chinese people being trapped in poverty for decades. However, since 1978, the Chinese government has adopted increasingly flexible and diverse institutional arrangements, such as the re-establishment of private property rights and the invention of shared property rights. These new systems have cooperated with the old systems to maintain social stability and economic growth.

The rapid development of computer and Internet technology has completely changed production techniques and human society. The emergence of new technologies means the emergence of new industries capable of using these technologies, which provide new employment opportunities. Those who work in these new industries and who establish new production relationships (e.g., most of China’s high-tech enterprises now use some form of shared property system) form new social groups that work together to accelerate the pace of institutional evolution (Cao & Yu, 2019). From 1978–2019, 108.7 × 106 college and university students were trained (National Bureau of Statistics 1979–2020), and most of them are now working in high-tech fields or using new technological tools (e.g., computers, the Internet). The shared property rights system has increased their enthusiasm for their work by increasing their share of their employer’s profits, thereby providing direct payback for their efforts.

Some scholars believe that China has made rapid progress in economic development, but that its political institutions have not advanced (Brodsgaard, 2017; Gallagher, 2002). However, this opinion ignores important changes in how the Chinese Communist Party operates; these include delegation of more power to provinces and the establishment of special economic zones such as Shenzhen, where new approaches can be tested. In fact, China’s political reform work began in 1978: on 11 May, GuangMing Daily published an article (“Practice is the Only Criterion for Testing Truth”) that represented an ideological revolution. In summary, the author proposed that social institutions should not be evaluated based on how well they followed the government’s ideology, but rather based on whether the system worked. This represented the beginning of a Chinese ideological change that has also affected the political structure.

The Chinese government has completely abandoned the ideologies of “class struggle” and “dictatorship of the proletariat” from the Mao era. By increasingly empowering local governments, including provinces, cities, and counties (e.g., to sell land to raise money to fund their operations), and by allowing regions such as Hong Kong and Macau some independence so they can follow the capitalist path, the traditional centralized political system is being gradually replaced by a decentralized federal political system in which the central government defines national goals, and each local administration determines which methods are most likely to help them achieve those goals locally (Cao & Ren, 2019). The result is an increasingly diverse political culture that emphasizes innovation rather than adherence to a single unchangeable ideology, with the goal being to build a new society sustained by shared prosperity. This diversified political and cultural environment provides a more relaxed political environment in which more and more institutional innovation is encouraged, such as the adoption of shared property rights and tests of innovative approaches by local governments.

The efficiency of the shared property rights system is that it not only promotes the development of high-tech industry, but also improves the lives of citizens by providing innovative new ways to live, produce, and trade. Between 1997 and 2019, the number of Internet users in China increased from 60 × 104 to more than 85 × 107, increasing from less than 1% of the country’s population to more than 61 %, and this has led to equally rapid socioeconomic change. In 2019, Internet sales reached 31.3 × 1012 RMB, accounting for 76 % of the total domestic retail sales (National Bureau of Statistics 1979–2020), compared with almost zero 10 years ago (Fig. 2). As a result of these changes, China has surpassed the traditional industrial countries and has entered the ranks of high-tech developing countries. As the system of shared property rights grows in popularity, its efficiency will eventually lead to fundamental changes in the political system and continue to guide China toward globalization.

Sharing property rights is a major revolution in production relationships. When the knowledge workers who are most responsible for a company’s growth and profits own a piece of the company, their status changes. They are no longer laborers working only for the benefit of a capitalist boss, but co-owners who are also working for themselves. However, since all of these workers share the benefits of innovation, there is also a powerful incentive to cooperate and innovate together rather than independently. Such a production relationship can improve employee motivation to innovate, thus making enterprises more competitive and profitable. In a future society based on shared property rights, older institutions such as state ownership, private ownership, and the traditional stock ownership system can coexist with shared property rights, possibly even in the same enterprise. Those industries that worked well under the old system will not be eliminated but will continue to exist in the new society and will change slowly as they respond to the new environment.

5. China’s experience

Cultural diversity is a core feature of Chinese society (Cao, 2016). During the reform and opening to the west process, China did not reject its traditional culture, as was done during the Mao era, but instead tried to learn from it. Like luxuriant trees, the integration of traditional culture with new forms of culture, some imported from the west and modified to meet Chinese tastes, has maintained social stability, promoted cultural exchanges, and improved the efficiency of social and economic processes. China’s reform of its political system invigorated all aspects of the Chinese economy (Cao & Ren, 2019), resulting in unprecedented economic growth. China’s economic development is one of the biggest drivers of global economic development and international trade (Abraham & Van Hove, 2005; Aoyama, 2016).

Scholars have traditionally studied China's institutional changes from an economic rather than a political perspective by focusing on economic utility rather than on the evolution of production relationships (Hilmawan & Clark, 2019; Pu, 2017). They mistakenly believed that China has neither completed its socialist revolution (Herrmann-Pillath, 2006; Whyte, 2009; Zhao, 2006) nor fully accepted capitalist institutional arrangements (Grabowski, 2007; Meinzen-Dick, 2007). They therefore see China’s current state as a uniquely Chinese (isolated) model that has no universal value.

Our description of the shared property approach suggests that China has found an effective way to combine the strengths of the capitalist and socialist systems to create a new system that has helped to drive China’s rise. The new system is the result of institutional evolution, not revolution, and has therefore minimized social unrest. Therefore, the emergence of the new system does not need to eradicate the old system, but rather must coexist and cooperate with the old system, thereby jointly promoting the development of human society and economic development.

There is no single solution to all practical problems, and shared property rights may not be suitable for all industries. An industry does not need to adopt this new model if their old methods continue to work well. The coexistence of a series of ownership modes is a basic path during the development of human civilization. The shared property rights system does not need to deny the old private and public ownership systems, and can instead continue to grow and evolve until it becomes the dominant approach and one that spreads to other areas of society.

People tend to view and understand the world from a single perspective, including their judgment of the evolution of human society. Some continue to use the simplistic label of “communism” to view China, thus ignoring the capitalist processes that have arisen within China; others continue to ignore the socialist nature of China and focus only on its economic growth, assuming that the Chinese miracle is purely the result of capitalism (Hachigian & Peng, 2010). As we have shown in this paper, the truth lies somewhere between these perspectives.

Although the concept of shared property rights is similar to communist ideology, shared property rights does not exclude the beneficial elements of private ownership and a free market economy. Just as the industrial revolution did not eliminate agriculture, and instead replaced manual labor with mechanized production, shared property rights can improve the efficiency and productivity of the older processes. China has proven through its own experience that shared property rights does not require the elimination of capitalism, but rather emphasizes the need for different approaches to coexist harmoniously in the same country, or even in the same enterprise, through technological and institutional innovation.

Confucius famously observed that “all men are brothers”. The evolution of shared property rights reflects this belief because it emphasizes cooperation and coexistence rather than competition and warfare. The Chinese example provides an alternative to traditional approaches, which emphasized a zero-sum game, by proposing an approach that is more synergistic and more likely to lead to win–win solutions. China’s institutional change is only the beginning of a longer process, not the end. The development of a society based on shared property rights has just started. Whoever takes the lead in perfecting this approach and in adapting it to other areas of human endeavor, such as university education, will become the leader of future human society.

Author contributions

S. Cao designed the research and analyzed the data; S. Cao, C. Xia, and X. Suo wrote the manuscript. All authors have approved the manuscript.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

We thank Geoffrey Hart of Montréal, Canada, for his help in writing this manuscript. We are also grateful for the comments and criticisms of an earlier version of this manuscript by our colleagues and the journal’s reviewers.

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