Good education, housing, medical care and insurance are within the reach of more Chinese since the adoption of a market economy, according to a Tuesday commentary in the People’s Daily, the flagship newspaper of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

The formation and improvement of China’s socialist market economy has reshaped the lives of 1.3 billion people and exerted an influence on the future of the whole world, wrote Ren Zhongping.

In the past 20 years, the most populous nation has become the world’s second-largest economy and has stood among middle-income countries in terms of its per capita gross domestic product, Ren said.

China turned itself from a seller’s market to a buyer’s market and became the world’s biggest exporter and a member of the World Trade Organization, Ren said.

At the beginning, China’s transformation faced many obstacles, including domestic prejudice and doubts of foreign countries, Ren said.

However, the “China miracle” surprised everyone, Ren wrote.

“It is said that everything happened in the past 20 years could not be planned in any plan,” Ren said.

Focusing on developing productivity, adhering to the common development of public-owned and private economies and integrating market allocation with the government regulation helped make China successful, Ren said.

However, the problems that have emerged after development are no smaller than those that existed before China’s prosperity, Ren said.

It’s imperative to enhance the quality of economic development, eliminate factors that hamper economic growth mode and smash the administrative monopoly so as to further free development of the private economy, Ren said.

The author called for a sound insurance system that can relieve social anxiety and narrow the income gap, as well as stark government reforms.

Unswerving reform is the only way to realize the goal of “establishing a sound social market economic system by 2020,” Ren said.

Changing China’s economic growth mode, promoting transformation of government functions and boosting equality in public services will allow China to shoulder a sea of challenges both now and in the future, Ren wrote.