Enhance economic and social resilience
2026-02-02
Economic and social resilience is commonly used to describe the ability of the economy and society to withstand external disruptions, natural disasters, unexpected events, and other uncertain factors. It emphasizes the systemic, complex, diverse, and interconnected characteristics of modern society, and focuses on providing bottom line thinking, extreme contingency plans, flexible space, and emergency preparedness in national governance. The Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China regards adhering to coordinated development and security as one of the important principles that must be followed for economic and social development during the 15th Five Year Plan period, emphasizing the need to enhance economic and social resilience. Moreover, in the deployment of important tasks such as strengthening the international transportation channel system, building modern people's cities, constructing a modern infrastructure system, and strengthening the construction of the power system, the requirement of "resilience" is included. To study and implement the spirit of the Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, we must carefully study the deployment requirements of "enhancing economic and social resilience", scientifically grasp the profound changes in the development environment, deeply analyze the characteristics and laws of the times, explore and practice modern governance concepts, and provide more powerful security guarantees and solid development support for achieving the economic and social development goals during the 15th Five Year Plan period. Enhancing economic and social resilience "originates from the strong demand of the times for economic and social resilience, and is a higher target requirement for a country's governance system and governance capacity after its economic and social development level has reached a certain level. Enhancing economic and social resilience reflects the modernization, legalization, professionalization, and scientific trend of national governance, with rich social practice foundation, profound historical background, and urgent practical needs. To cope with the increasing uncertainties in modern society. In today's world, the century long changes are accelerating and intertwined with chaos. The changing side is deepening, while the chaotic side is becoming more prominent. The international balance of power has undergone profound adjustments, and a few Western countries are attempting to maintain unipolar hegemony, wielding the "tariff stick" recklessly to disrupt the global economic and trade order. The global governance deficit has worsened, public goods are lacking, global security issues have become prominent, and traditional and non-traditional security threats are overlapping and resonating. How to enhance economic and social resilience in development, have strong ability to resolve and resist external shocks, effectively reduce damage, quickly restore development and return to the right track when crises arise, are important challenges to national governance concepts, governance systems and governance capabilities. The inherent requirements during the period of economic transformation and social change. At present, China's development has entered a critical period of comprehensive upgrading from large to strong, and the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation has entered an irreversible historical stage. As the world's second largest economy and largest developing country, it faces external pressure and obstruction from some developed countries, and undergoes a transformation and reshaping from high-speed growth to high-quality development domestically. How to enhance economic and social resilience, have sufficient coping wisdom, more means, and supporting plans in the process of rapid development and sustained growth, and cope with the impact of pressure and resistance from internal and external sources on the economy and society, is a major issue that China must face and solve during the period of economic transformation, reform and reshaping, and social change. Resolving multiple security and risk challenges is an inevitable requirement. Development is the eternal theme of human pursuit of a happy life, and only continuous development can create a better future. Development and security go hand in hand. Whether we can handle the relationship between development and security well is related to the survival of the country, the safety of the nation, and the happiness of the people. To enhance economic and social resilience, we must not only prevent the pursuit of development from neglecting security, but also prevent the pursuit of absolute security from affecting development. The key goal of national governance is to achieve economic and social development in an environment with strong certainty and predictability. Enhancing economic and social resilience "has a rich connotation. The term" resilience "was first used to describe the properties of materials. Resilient materials refer to the ability of materials to absorb energy and undergo plastic deformation before fracture after being impacted. The better the toughness of the material, the less likely it is to undergo brittle fracture. Due to its broad applicability, the term 'resilience' is widely used in various fields of the economy and society, such as economic resilience, market resilience, fiscal resilience, corporate resilience, cultural resilience, social resilience, etc. Economic and social resilience is commonly used to describe the ability of the economy and society to withstand external disruptions, natural disasters, unexpected events, and other uncertain factors. It emphasizes the systemic, complex, diverse, and interconnected characteristics of modern society, and focuses on providing bottom line thinking, extreme contingency plans, flexible space, and emergency preparedness in national governance. Economic and social resilience stem from dynamism. Dynamic means liquidity, smoothness, and development. The history of social development shows that static societies often have poor compatibility, limited fault tolerance, and many fixed characteristics. Under strong internal and external impact and damage, it is prone to embrittlement and fracture. Economic and social openness, as well as frequent communication and integration with the outside world in terms of information, technology, personnel, etc., lead to a broad perspective, open thinking, enlightened culture, sensitivity to the trends of the times, high frequency of resource allocation, flow, and use, and strong vitality and resilience of social subsystems. Economic and social resilience stem from systemic factors. Systematicity means wholeness, correlation, and hierarchy. Economic and social development is a vast system involving various fields such as politics, economy, culture, society, and ecology. With excellent systematic planning and overall layout configuration, there is a great deal of flexibility in defending against risks and disasters. When encountering various predictable and unpredictable internal and external destructive forces, pressures, and resistance, a multi-level defense system can be formed to share and buffer the damage, prevent imminent collapse, or prevent the entire system from being affected by individual system problems, and avoid overall collapse. Economic and social resilience stem from adaptability. A resilient economic and social development entity can not only achieve transformative development within existing conditions and traditional models, but also adjust its development mode in response to difficulties and crises, especially major external shocks. It can activate and dispatch existing resources to resolve crises, adapt to new environments and conditions in a timely manner, recover from abnormal environments, and achieve continuity of development. Economic and social resilience stem from wisdom. With the development of the network information society and digital technology, the intelligent characteristics of economic and social development have become more prominent. On the one hand, economic and social development provides a large amount of digital resources such as information and data, becoming producers and providers of data information. On the other hand, in the process of economic and social development, it is also necessary to use a large amount of data information and become consumers of data information. Only by being good at utilizing data, information, algorithms, artificial intelligence, etc. for risk monitoring, early warning, decision support, and resource allocation can we improve our ability to predict, respond to, and handle risks and crises. Economic and social resilience stem from the people's nature. The people are the creators of history, the most solid support and strongest confidence of our party. Although individuals in society have differences and play different roles in economic and social development, social development, risk resistance, and crisis resolution are ultimately achieved through cooperation between individuals and social groups. Only by always adhering to putting the people at the center, continuously investing in people, and continuously benefiting the people with the fruits of development, and building the overall ability of economic and social resilience on broad support and inclusive development for all members of society, can economic and social resilience have a solid foundation. Economic and social resilience stem from security. Fighting against nature is an eternal issue for human survival and development, and doing a good job in disaster prevention, reduction, and relief is an important part of enhancing economic and social resilience. At the same time, from the perspective of human social development, due to the limited availability of resources and energy and the universality of competition, preventing crises and conflicts caused by competition for resources, energy, wealth, and other aspects has always been an urgent issue that economic and social development must seriously face. Enhancing economic and social resilience requires comprehensive measures, adhering to systematic thinking, supported by multidisciplinary concepts, utilizing modern governance thinking, grasping the characteristics of risk society and uncertain era, further improving the national security legal system, strategic system, policy system, and risk prevention and control system, and strengthening the "protective barrier" of economic and social development from multiple levels and perspectives. Dealing with uncertainty with high-quality development. Development is the most powerful security, and not developing is the greatest insecurity. The lack of economic and social resilience is mainly due to the low quality of development. We must firmly grasp the theme of high-quality development, achieve high-level technological self-reliance and self-improvement, respond to uncertainties from both internal and external factors as well as the natural world with high-quality development, efficient governance capabilities, and highly recognized social forces, and firmly grasp the independence, autonomy, and initiative of development. Pay attention to appropriate redundancy and necessary backups in the development system. In modern society where risk factors are increasing and uncertainty characteristics are prominent, appropriate redundancy and necessary backup, including multi scheme preparation, multi source support, and multi role configuration, are important components of economic and social resilience. For example, the substitutability of energy development, the diversification of technological routes, the multi-level nature of supply chains, the richness of industrial structures, the networking of social support, the diversity of emergency subjects, and the tolerance of cultural thinking. Only with appropriate redundancy and necessary backups can economic and social development have fault-tolerant space and sufficient resilience, forming self-organizing and adaptive capabilities, and avoiding the problems of vulnerability and insufficient tension in development. Always do a good job in providing universal support and ensuring people's livelihood. Chinese path to modernization focuses on people's livelihood. The most powerful support and bottom line for dealing with uncertainty is the broad masses of the people. To enhance economic and social resilience, we need to highlight the people-oriented direction of modernization, adhere to the people-centered development concept, promote common prosperity, build a high-quality life, strengthen inclusive, basic, and bottom line livelihood construction, do a good job in various livelihood undertakings and fill the gaps in the livelihood field in promoting high-quality development, "invest in people" in capacity improvement, health maintenance, career development, and other aspects, improve the ability to uphold justice, rights relief, security guarantee, and service supply, and continuously enhance the strength and ability of the whole society to resist risks. Build a multi-layered risk prevention system. Today, crises and risks are diffuse and interconnected, and a single defense system and defense subject are difficult to cope with complex threats and challenges. In dealing with risks, it is necessary to build a multi-level risk prevention network from the state to social organizations, enterprises, emerging social groups, and individuals, and enhance the social synergy in responding to risks. In the field of risk response, it is necessary to form a three-dimensional risk defense pattern from ideology, policies, systems, to skills, industries, infrastructure, natural ecology, etc., and form a three-dimensional risk response complex. At the same time, we should focus on the sustainable development of the economy and society, and build multiple emergency safety valves and pressure buffering layers from national security strategy to social security education, various organizational security protection, personal safety emergency response capabilities, from ideological guidance to cultural confidence, ideological education, psychological counseling, insurance protection, etc. Always guard against extreme crises with bottom line thinking. Survival is the prerequisite for development, and safety is the condition for development. The sustained and healthy development of the economy and society must be carried out on the basis of ensuring survival and safety. We need to integrate bottom line thinking and a sense of crisis into all areas of the economy and society
Edit:Luoyu Responsible editor:Wang Erdong
Source:Beijing Daily
Special statement: if the pictures and texts reproduced or quoted on this site infringe your legitimate rights and interests, please contact this site, and this site will correct and delete them in time. For copyright issues and website cooperation, please contact through outlook new era email:lwxsd@liaowanghn.com