Building the road to harmony needs social capital

A recent World Bank report identified six reform priorities that China should implement to avoid a so-called hard landing. Underpinning China 2030: Building a Modern, Harmonious and Creative High-Income Society is, as the name suggests, the notion that the country's future depends on creating a harmonious society.

"Heaven and people in harmony" is a perennial theme in Chinese philosophy and culture. In recent years this desire for harmony has intensified as China's rapid economic growth has continued to drive enormous social change.

In 2006 the Chinese government enshrined the building of a harmonious society as a central theme in the country's economic, social and political mission.

It marked a move from the trinity of economic, political and cultural construction to the four cornerstones of economic, political, cultural and social construction. It saw the end of a model that had concentrated almost exclusively on economic development, and the beginning of a vision with sustainable development at its heart.

It recognized that China's experiments on the path from tradition to modernity, while they have always had an economic basis, have also been culturally normative attempts to reconstruct the country fundamentally as a "learning society" in the interests of the majority.

The economic and social changes of the past two decades have brought the Chinese people benefits and opportunities, but also major challenges. The country's leaders believe that creating a harmonious society is strategically important in dealing with the problem of uneven urban, rural and regional economic development, increasing pressures from human resource conditions; employment, social security, wealth distribution, education, healthcare, housing, industrial safety, crime prevention and public security that affect people's daily lives.

The most disturbing aspect of China's social ills, perhaps the very one that prompted the drive for a harmonious society, is the decline of the social value system, a result of traditional and positive Chinese social values being neglected for many years. Older and younger generations now judge success differently. In the early decades of the People's Republic of China, "giving my youth to my country" and "serving the people heart and soul" were articles of faith for many young people; nowadays the dictum many live by is "money is everything".

This has made the government aware that to develop in a sustainable way, to manage, regulate and maintain both progress and stability, a just and harmonious society is needed.

The World Bank report's six key reform priorities included: strengthening the foundations of a market-based economy, speeding up the pace of innovation, expanding the green economy, strengthening the fiscal system and seeking mutually beneficial relations with the world.

But perhaps the most telling priority of the six was the need to strive for the "equality of opportunity and basic security for all". Integral to achieving this aim is education, specifically fostering a commitment to lifelong learning and the development of a culture of learning.

The concept of a harmonious society is related to that of social capital, a key indicator of which is trust. This encourages individuals to extend their networks with confidence and provides an incentive to individuals to participate, since they expect this will bring common benefits. Taking part fosters a sense of trust, which builds an authentic community of citizens. How is social capital created? It is believed that education is a key to the creation of social capital, and greater educational achievement is an important outcome.

Does such an approach suit China? Quality of life for individuals is related to social enhancement, and the quality of all-round development relies to a considerable extent on life-long education and life-long learning. So a modern education system that includes life-long learning including vocational training opportunities has rightly become a policy focus for the Chinese government.

However, turning policy into practice is no small task, especially in a country as big as China with its vast and varied population. Furthermore, given the centralized nature of Chinese government, national policies and regulations are critical to efforts aimed at turning policy into practice. One strategy has been designating some ministries at the State level to be key departments for promoting nationwide lifelong learning activities. Another has been the use of special projects, targeted both at specific needs (such as retraining laid-off workers or rural migrants) and at the more general development of communities and workers.

By the mid- to late-1990s laid-off workers had become a serious social concern. In response to the massive labor redundancy problem in State-owned enterprises the government took action to help laid-off workers cope with their difficulties and to upgrade their skills.

For example, in 1998 the Ministry of Labor and Social Security launched a nationwide reemployment project, "10 million in three years", to provide re-employment training services and job counseling for 10 million unemployed workers, and additional vocational skills and entrepreneurship training services for 6 million over three years.

In 2002 the ministry issued the "Advancing your employment ability plan", the goal of which is to offer vocational education and training to 50 million urban workers, 150 million rural workers and 3 million laid-off workers each year.

Training for rural migrants

Together with the acceleration of industrialization and urbanization more and more rural laborers are moving out of agriculture to seek non-agricultural jobs.

Although a small number find jobs in rural areas in township and village enterprises, most move to urban areas. In 2004, to equip rural migrants to find and to maintain work in urban areas, the central government asked six ministries, including the ministries of education and of agriculture, to implement a rural training scheme, the "sunshine project".

The goals of the project were to establish a rural migrant training mechanism, provide basic skills training to 50 million planned rural migrants and technical training for 30 million from 2005-10, that is six million a year, and provide on-the-job training for about 200 million rural workers who have entered non-agricultural industries.

Community education

Also in 2004, the Ministry of Education issued "Suggestions on promoting community education" to promote lifelong learning through building learning organizations: namely learning corporations, learning units, learning districts and learning neighborhoods, and confirmed that the function of community education was to accelerate the construction of a lifelong education system and promote the building of a harmonious society.

Many schools have joined such efforts, providing learning resources and offering lectures and training programs, making lifelong learning a reality for their local residents. For instance, in Jinan in 2005, 67 elementary, middle and high schools jointly held a grand event titled "Connecting to neighborhoods, facilitating community learning and building a harmonious community together".

As these examples show, many initiatives, some national, some regional, some local, have been taken to implement lifelong learning. But how effective were they? What have been the problems of implementation? Four main problems have been identified.

First, lack of coordination between government agencies, and between government agencies and non-governmental organizations has led to confusion and ineffective use of educational resources.

Second, under the current structure, China's life-long learning system is seriously fragmented. This is because the Chinese administrative structure is a typically compartmentalized one in which each department tends to have its own functions and responsibilities in isolation from others.

Third, the need for better coordination is not limited to central government. It is also needed at provincial and local levels through broad and formal coordinating mechanisms set up by local government.

Fourth, as a means of developing a coherent system, there is an urgent need to develop an effective national management information system in China to provide better information on training and the labor market than exists at present.

That said, the goal of a harmonious society remains a highly desirable one, with formal education and non-formal and informal lifelong learning key means of achieving it. The government has taken steps to implement this through various projects and activities.

However, life-long learning is a systemic undertaking and requires commitment from stakeholders at all levels, especially from those who operate from the bottom upwards rather than according to central direction.

The government must recognize that developing lifelong learning, and therefore a harmonious society, depends on building social capital. It is this that should top any list of reform priorities.

W. John Morgan is UNESCO Chair of Political Economy and Education, School of Education, and senior fellow at the China Policy Institute, University of Nottingham. Naixia Wang is lecturer in Mandarin Chinese, School of Contemporary Chinese Studies, University of Nottingham. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.