Yu Yongyue and Wang Shiming of the Institute of Party History and Literature of the CCP Central Committee wrote that "common prosperity has always been the ideal pursued by the Chinese people for thousands of years".
[4]: 161 A People's Daily article on 19 February 1979 called A Portion of Peasants Getting Rich First Should Be Encouraged (一部分农民先富起来应受到鼓励) attacked Lin Biao, historically Mao's chosen successor, and the Gang of Four, a powerful faction during the Cultural Revolution, and decried what it said was the practice of egalitarianism in the people's communes, saying that "[w]hat was originally intended to guide commune members down a road to ‘common prosperity,’ in the end made a rich team poor, and then poorer and poorer".
[6] Bo stated that a more equitable growth was more favorable to China, saying "[s]ome people worry that seeking common prosperity will delay development and maintain that we should first make a big cake and then divide it.
"[6] Bo's campaign for common prosperity included decreasing inequality between urban and rural residents, increasing role of the state sector and the government in the economy, and a fairer distribution of income.
In a speech to the Central Financial and Economic Affairs Commission (CFEAC), later published in the CCP theoretical journal Qiushi, Xi said that in some countries "the wealth gap and middle-class collapse have aggravated social divisions, political polarization and populism, giving a profound lesson to the world",[7] saying that China should promote common prosperity to guard against this fate.
[14] According to The New York Times, Chinese officials and advisers have said that they want to create an "olive-shaped" society with a large middle-class and little in extreme wealth or poverty.
[21]: 135 Especially in 2021, common prosperity was used as justification for large-scale regulations and crackdowns against perceived excesses of private industries, most prominently the tech, property and the tutoring sectors.
[30] On 3 February 2022, Liu Qiangdong, founder of JD.com, announced he was donating $2.2 billion worth of stocks to charity as part of common prosperity.
[32] In response to the common prosperity policies, Goldman Sachs created a portfolio of 50 stocks which includes companies related to manufacturing, green energy, consumption and state-owned enterprise (SOE) reform.
[33] In November 2021, Xi additionally opened a new stock exchange in Beijing targeted for small and medium enterprises (SMEs), which was a part of this campaign.
[40] On 4 January 2023, Bloomberg News reported that China International Capital Corporation (CICC) was cutting travel perks for its senior bankers as part of the policy.
[41] In August 2023, Reuters reported Bank of China launched a countrywide exercise to reduce the salary gaps among its employees and mid- and high-level managers.
[47] In the same month, the South China Morning Post reported all state-backed brokerages, mutual fund firms and banks except financial institutions that backed by private investors would implement a salary cap of 3 million yuan, with those who earned higher than the cap in the previous years required to return their excess salary.
[48] In September 2024, Reuters reported China Minsheng Bank cut the salary of its staff by 50% and stopped paying for some work-related expenses in its Beijing branch.
[53] The Wall Street Journal reported that the ultimate aim of common prosperity was to return the CCP closer to its socialist roots by increasing state control over the economy, while still allowing market mechanisms to exist.
[54] Others, including Willy Wo-Lap Lam, a political analyst writing for the Jamestown Foundation, have argued the campaign is designed to enhance CCP control over private enterprises[56] while James Palmer of Foreign Policy stated that "in theory, common prosperity is an attempt to make the Chinese economy more equal, but in practice, it has become another excuse for putting the CCP in charge of everything, especially private businesses.
[59] Ren Yi, an online internet commentator who writes under the name "Chairman Rabbit", said that common prosperity will allow China to better adapt to the future of technology, especially artificial intelligence (AI).
[67] On 1 November 2022, Jiashan County of Zhejiang was named by a guideline of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) as a "leading trial area" for common prosperity.
[27]: 137 The first distribution aims to increase personal income for the majority of the population (especially low-income groups) through measures including reasonable salaries, adjusting the minimum wage, and enforcing a holiday pay system.
[27]: 139–140 As part of the common prosperity policy, Zhejiang announced in 2024 that it would remove restrictions in hukou registrations in all of the province except the provincial capital Hangzhou.