The introduction of the income distribution reform plan was postponed, and experts suggested learning from Japan.

The overall plan for income distribution reform, which was originally scheduled to be introduced this year, will still be postponed. When it will be introduced, it still needs the unified deployment of the State Council. Yang Yiyong, a scholar who participated in the discussion of the draft plan and director of the Institute of Sociology of the National Development and Reform Commission, introduced.

The State Department is still soliciting opinions from all levels before the final plan is finalized. The experience of some pioneer countries has also received attention. On December 21, the China Development Research Foundation, a research Institute under the Development Research Center of the State Council, held a special teleconference, which was attended by a number of Chinese experts on income distribution and connected with Professor Ito Zhengzheng, Department of Economics, Tokyo University, Japan.

Recently, Professor Ito was commissioned to complete the collation of 91 volumes of the country's "National Income Doubling Plan".

In the discussion session of the conference, Chinese scholars believe that Japan's detailed means such as the demonstration mode of the plan before the introduction of the national income doubling plan and the evaluation in the process, as well as the way to solve the problem of labor market supply by increasing the number of years of education, are all experiences that we can learn from. At the same time, greater efforts should be made to break the monopoly and limit government expenditure.

According to Lu Mai, Secretary-General of the China Development Research Foundation, relevant discussions will be sorted out and reported to the decision-making level for reference.

Total or Structure?

Not long ago, Chi Fulin, president of China (Hainan) Reform and Development Research Institute, made it clear that China urgently needs to take the reform of income distribution as a binding target, striving for the "12th Five-Year Plan" income growth rate of urban and rural residents not less than 8%, and the average annual growth rate of workers'remuneration not less than 10%.

"According to this calculation, the income of Chinese workers will double in about 10 years, and if the income distribution policy is reformed, it will double in five years, similar to Japan's national income doubling plan." Chi Fulin said.

Su Hainan, vice chairman of the China Labor Association and chairman of the Compensation Professional Committee, has also repeatedly called for learning from Japan's experience and launching China's national income doubling plan. "If the average annual wage increases by more than 15%, it can be doubled in about five years.".

Pilot projects have begun in some places. In September this year, the Guangdong Development and Reform Commission's Report on the Implementation of Expanding Domestic Demand in Guangdong Province pointed out that it would actively explore the implementation of the "National Income Doubling Plan" in the future.

Wei Jianing, Vice Minister of Macroeconomic Research Department of the Development Research Center of the State Council, warned that "the growth of total national income is not equal to the growth of people's income.". We need to adjust the internal structure of national income and eliminate the unfair distribution of income among different groups and units.

At the practical level, as local governments have been accustomed to the economic indicators of GDP and fiscal revenue, experts worry that the general mention of doubling national income will make local governments pursue total growth rather than adjustment of specific income distribution structure.

In fact, there are indeed signs of this in the draft of the 12th Five-Year Plan recently published in various places. Recently, the main planning indicators of Guangxi, Heilongjiang, Guizhou and other provinces are still based on the economy, such as "striving to double the GDP of the region by 2015 compared with 2010, and more than doubling the fiscal revenue". Income indicators for specific groups are rarely involved.

In Japan's doubling plan in that year, indicators such as GDP, total national income, and even wage doubling of specific groups of people were involved.

Liu Wei, a researcher at the Research Institute of the Ministry of Finance, is worried that after simply proposing the income doubling plan, he will not be able to get out of the target.

"Instead of putting forward some indicators around the plan, it is better to face up to our core problems in the field of primary distribution." She believes that the most important thing the government should do is to reduce intervention in the market mechanism and distort how Japan's plan is formulated

According to Ito, it took a lot of effort and manpower from the conception to the preparation stage of the national income doubling plan.

In 1959, the Japanese Cabinet put forward the issue of the income doubling plan to the Japanese Economic Forum. The General Affairs Council was specifically responsible for setting up two small committees to finalize the basic framework of the national income doubling plan.

Under the committee, a small policy research Institute will be set up to study and set economic or social development indicators. Once the basic objectives such as GNP are clear, the comprehensive policy research Institute, the government public sector research Institute, the non-governmental sector research Institute and the measurement department research Institute are responsible for promoting them.

The government sector research Institute and the private sector research Institute are the two cores, under which there are 17 sub-committees, such as investment allocation, transportation, housing policy, water conservancy, energy, science and technology, education and training, social security committee, etc.

These committees are not responsible for project approval, but only propose measures in different areas, determine how to allocate investment, and finally summarize and determine the overall plan.

After the implementation of the policy, there are follow-up forces. Ito introduced that the decision-makers and researchers at that time found that the original national income plan target deviated from the actual situation, the economic growth rate was too high, worried about the resulting economic imbalance in Japan, and immediately decided to revise the policy to achieve a balance between the parties.

The specific method is to set up many branches in the Economic Review Council, such as price, labor, industrial structure, social capital, national economy, finance and so on, to study the differences between the plan and the actual situation, and then adjust the policy.

Wei Jianing pointed out that, to some extent, such a classified demonstration mode is more effective than simply "soliciting opinions from the society"; at the same time, the departments responsible for policy formulation and demonstration are not specifically responsible for project approval, and their appeals are relatively more detached.

Power Education

In Japan's national income doubling plan, "improving people's ability" has been regarded as one of the key points, which is related to the continuous supply of high-quality labor force and the continuous coordination of compulsory education.

As a measure, Ito introduced that in the 1960s, engineering departments were set up in every prefectural university in Japan to help students learn new equipment and technology; research institutes were set up in various enterprises to train technicians and managers; In terms of education, the number of high school students will continue to expand, and some five-year high schools will also train key technical personnel.

Zhao Jinping, deputy director of the Foreign Economic Research Department of the Development Research Center of the State Council, based on his research, found that "Japan's compulsory high school education has delayed the entry of labor force into the market for three or four years;"; In terms of cross-regional mobility of labor force, there is no household registration restriction, which brings about a fair starting point for all kinds of employees, thus ensuring the fairness of wages and other corresponding levels.

Ito's words also give evidence. He said that Japan absorbed a large number of workers in various emerging industries, and the enrollment rate increased rapidly, reaching 100% of high school graduates and 25% of four-year universities after the 1970s.

The development of industry and the general improvement of education level have brought about the narrowing of the income gap among workers. Ito said that in 1955, the wages of employees in medium-sized enterprises were half of those in large enterprises; by 1975, the wages of workers in small and medium-sized enterprises began to approach those in large enterprises, equivalent to 90% of the latter.

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