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The year 2018 is special for me. It marks 50 years since I arrived in Turned Left Banner of Inner Mongolia from Beijing and 40 years since I entered the Renmin University of China. In September, we, nearly 200 educated youths from Beijing who had been stationed in Turned Left Banner, returned to the dreamy Daqing Mountain to look up at the stars and reminisce about our lives together. After 50 years, the stars, the moon, the Daqing Mountain, and even the people are what they used to be. However, our appearances, jobs, and fates have changed dramatically. If somebody would ask me, What is the factor that has had the greatest impact on your life? I would answer definitely, institutional reform.
My generation grew up in the midst of the transformation between the old and new institutions during the most important period of institutional reform in Chinese history. Since the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC), a raft of institutional reforms have impacted on successive generations. Fifty years ago, since the Cultural Revolution from the 1960s to the 1970s had abolished the normal education system and the college entrance examination system, Bei-jing youths left our schools, went to Inner Mongolia, and settled in Tuned Left Banner. As the college entrance examination system was restored in 1977, students were able to converge on college campuses from the rural areas, corps and factories throughout the country. From land reform, mutual aid groups, primary cooperatives, senior cooperatives, people's communes, the household responsibility contract system to rural revitalization and construction of special towns, and from the planned economic system to the market economic system, changes have We all have good ideals and pursuits in life that we strive for throughout our lives. We study and work diligently, but we still wonder whether individual effort is proportional to individual success. Success or failure in life depends on two factors: individual effort and institutional environment, While individual effort is essential, the institutional environment is a decisive factor in individual effort. Our experience is an epitome in this regard. If there was neither Cultural Revolution nor reform and opening up our fate would have been different.
The immense sea allows fish to leap at liberty, the vast sky lets birds fly freely. Different creatures have different capabilities, which can only be exercised in the natural environment to which they are respectively adapted, and changes in the natural environment have led to the extinction and renewal of countless biological species. Human development, however, depends not only on the natural environment but also on the institutional environment. In the history of various nations and countries in the world, institutional reform is the node of the historical development of human society throughout the development of the primitive communal system, slave system, feudal system, capitalist system, and the socialist system. And it is clear that even within the same nation or the same country, the fates of people in different institutional environments are distinct.
Unlike plants and animals that can only adapt to changes in the natural environment, humans can change the natural environment as well as the institutional environment. Different social systems have unique characteristics, which have different impacts on the survival and historical development of various nations and countries. Throughout history, the strength of a nation or a country often begins with the gradual formation of an advanced system that facilitates the development of politics, economy, science and technology, and culture through institutional reform. For a nation or a country to become more prosperous, rational systems, advanced ideas, and leading technologies are indispensable.