What Is Wrong With “Efficiency Before Equality”

When the planned economic system was going into reform, the argument of "efficiency before equality" provided a positive drive in breaking the egalitarianism legacy and facilitated social-economic development under that particular historical background. However this argument is becoming more lopsided along with the development course in China, its limitation is shown in the conflict against the philosophy of "humanity-based" development. It failed to specify the issue of justice appropriately at the institutional vs. operational levels; it violates the principle of a harmonic society. When this argument is formalized and extends into non-economic fields, it inevitably results in a mis-positioning of the government in modern society, in a word, it is incorrect to assign the function of pursuing efficiency to the distributional actions, and letting the re-distribution take care of equality. From a long-term perspective, this points of view will shed widespread negative impact on the development of China' s economy and society, and will negatively impact on the formation of institutional structure with social justice in a modern society. It also holds back the process of healthier social policy designation. The right formulation should be: coordinated socio-economic development based on social justice; for a comprehensive progress in reform, open-up and modern construction, aiming at building a harmonic society.