Post-xiaokang era

According to the Party's goal, the central government has laid out ambitious new long-term goals of "basically achieving socialist modernization" by 2035 and becoming a "great modern socialist nation" that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious and beautiful by 2050.

Some scholars highlight the importance of solving income inequality.

"China, like the United States, has a problem with an uneven distribution of wealth, which can result in social tension and popular resentment toward the moneyed class," Moser says.

China is aware of this problem and is attempting to address it, he adds.

Ma says that the well-known Hu Line, which was drawn by population geographer Hu Huanyong in 1935 to mark striking differences in population distribution and urbanization between China's eastern and western regions, had not drastically changed until the end of the 20th century.

"How to enable everyone to benefit from social reforms and development, and how to promote balanced resource allocation in a sustainable way, have been issues that require scholars' and officials' research and investigations of the future agenda," he says.

The United Nations Development Programme's resident representative for China, Beate Trankmann, told China Daily previously that it's important to recognize that poverty has many dimensions besides income.

Since Deng first used the term xiaokang in 1979, "China has demonstrated that the goals of xiaokang within the boundaries of a huge nation state can be achieved in just over four decades if effective policies are implemented", Lomanov says.

Liu Dongchao, a professor at the department of literature and history of the CPC Central Committee's Party School, says that after achieving xiaokang by the end of the year, the CPC leadership, in the Party's centenary year, will move firmly toward realizing the next goal-the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.