Hu Jintao / Wen Jiabao era — harmonious society, WTO-boom, stimulus

Doctrine — stated goals and content

Hu-Wen "harmonious society" (和谐社会) + "scientific development concept" — a statist-reformist settlement layering distributional corrections and rural-urban rebalancing on top of Jiang-Zhu market reforms, while deploying counter-cyclical fiscal power through the global financial crisis. School: developmentalist state-capitalism with a social-policy tilt, informed by neo-left intellectual critique of 1990s dislocation. Left-right axis: within the CCP spectrum this is the statist-reformist / redistributive pole — not populist, not anti-market, but self-consciously rebalancing toward inland provinces, rural households, and wage-share concerns. Core policy content: (i) abolition of the agricultural tax (农业税, phased 2004-2006, fully abolished 1 January 2006 after 2,600 years); (ii) New Rural Cooperative Medical Scheme (新农合, launched 2003, near-universal by 2010) and Minimum Living Guarantee (dibao, rural rollout 2007); (iii) 2005 RMB exchange-rate reform ending the de facto peg, managed-float crawl against a basket (RMB appreciated ~21% vs USD 2005-2008); (iv) 2006 Property Rights Law equalising protection of private and state property; (v) 2008 Labour Contract Law strengthening written contracts, severance, and non-fixed-term conversion at 10-year tenure; (vi) four-trillion-yuan stimulus (四万亿, November 2008, ~12.5% of 2008 GDP over 2009-2010) channelled through local-government financing vehicles and SOE investment, driving credit to GDP from ~120% to ~170% by 2012; (vii) 2009-2010 "going out" OFDI acceleration, state-bank-led overseas resource acquisitions; (viii) 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015) emphasising strategic emerging industries and "indigenous innovation." Popularity / legitimacy: NPC confirmation near-unanimous (Hu presidential re-election 2008 received 2,956 yes / 3 no / 5 abstain); plenum outcomes delivered without visible split; protest / unrest incidence rose sharply — "mass incidents" reported from ~58k/year (2003) to ~180k/year (late 2000s, Sun Liping estimate), concentrated on land-requisition, labour, and environmental grievances; stated-survey approval (Pew / Horizon / Asian Barometer) of central government remained in the 80-90% band. Coherence line: retain WTO-era growth trajectory while redistributing toward rural/inland and deploying balance-sheet counter-cyclicality, accepting a credit-intensity step-change as the cost.