ABSTRACT
It is necessary to discuss in depth how to comprehend the health of the population and its improvement since the Reform and Opening Up. Only a clear understanding and precise positioning may lay a solid foundation for improving the health of the population, strengthening the aggregation of human capital, and reinvigorating China through science and education.
The health of a population is composed of “self-cultivation and quality of the population,” which, combined, generate new denotations and connotations. Self-cultivation is one’s daily practices in terms of mastery and application of pertinent knowledge and the resulting behavioral codes, and it covers physical and mental health as well as virtues, scientific and educational levels, cultural tastes, and civility. Quality describes the mass of an object and can be generalized to mean the degree of excellence of something.
The health of a population comprises three factors: physical health, intellectual ability and scientific and educational levels, and civility. The health of the Chinese population is now at a stage of comprehensive improvement, which is observed in all three factors. However, elevation of the population’s civility should be accelerated while the population’s ability to apply the knowledge learned from books and in classrooms should also be comprehensively elevated to boost innovational capacities by bringing the education system out of the “exam-taking zone.”
The concept of the new historical stage to comprehensively improve the health of the population is a sine qua none of the “Four-Pronged Comprehensive Strategy” and is indispensable to the pursuit of common prosperity. It should be part of the modernization that is aimed to be realized by the mid-21st century while bridging the transition of the population development strategy.
Mode transitioning and structural adjustment were proposed as early as 20 years ago. However, influenced by the increases in the proportion of the working-age population and the pressure to keep unemployment rates low, the proposal did not achieve much. Now that the population is at the post-demographic transition and the working-age population has passed the Lewis turning point, the post-golden age of the changing demographic age structure has arrived, and we are faced with a valuable strategic window to replace the pursuit of population quantity with that of population health in the next 15 years. We must not miss this window and should hold high the banner to reinvigorate China with science and education to improve the health of the population and to continuously build up human capital.
The only way to achieve these goals is reform. While we must acknowledge the huge leaps in the intellectual ability and scientific and educational levels of the population, we cannot ignore that the overall quality of the population still faces problems such as a compromised competitiveness in technologies and patents, and it is imperative to deepen the reform of the education system. The key is to abolish the “exam-oriented” system in order to reinvigorate the country with science and education and to drive further development with innovation.
