This paper discusses how to realize the visionary goal of “basically realizing socialist modernization by 2035 and achieving more obvious and substantial progress in the common prosperity of all people,” proposed by the fifth plenary session of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. Based on the Marxist political economy, this paper focuses on the theoretical and practical issues of common prosperity. It then comprehensively elaborates on the profound connotation of common prosperity, the goals, the ways by which to achieve it, and the design of indicator system and assessment methods to be used. Looking ahead to the next years, it makes a medium- and long-term analysis and forecasts on the economic and social goals related to the development of common prosperity from 2021 to 2035, analyzes the opportunities and challenges involved in achieving common prosperity, proposes to continuously narrow the three major development gaps between regions, urban and rural areas, and residents' incomes, realizes the goal of equalizing basic public services, and finally offers a strategic path by which to achieve common prosperity over a series of steps and stages. The strategic path, major tasks, and key measures for achieving common prosperity in stages featured in the Chinese experience will provide the rest of the world with references by which to solve the challenges of wealth gaps for humankind.

China’s entry into common prosperity coincides with digital economy at the same period. As China gradually enters the digital era, the common prosperity is bound to rely on the digital economy, and both have a strong fit. This paper analyzes the realization path of common prosperity from the perspective of digital economy, showing that digital economy can promote not only the general growth of macro economy, namely, “making the cake bigger,” but also regional industrial decentralization, urban and rural coordination and the construction of a unified national market, which is conducive to balanced growth, namely, “dividing the cake.” Moreover, it can make up for the shortage of public services, improve the service capacity of the government, make digital infrastructure more adequate and balanced, and accelerate the equalization of basic public services. Meanwhile, digital economy may also lead to structural unemployment of labor force and other problems. Therefore, it is necessary to maximize its strengths and avoid its weaknesses in policy design so as to achieve the result with less efforts and promote the cause of common prosperity in a sustained and steady way.

Shared development is an important means by which to improve people’s livelihood and well-being in the new era. During the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016–2020), China has made great achievements in the three major aspects of targeted poverty alleviation through industrial development, development of special rural areas, and equalization of urban and rural infrastructure and basic public services. In addition, the important experience of multi-agent participation, multi-mode guidance, and multi-line promotion has been accumulated in the individual, regional and urbanrural dimensions. However, there remain some deficiencies, such as low policy efficiency, poor matching ability, and prominent structural problems. At the beginning of the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021–2025), the task of enriching farmers through sharing has been faced with many challenges, such as major changes in the focus of poverty governance, greater numbers of restraints on the development of special rural areas, and heavy responsibilities of equalizing urban and rural infrastructure and basic public services. Therefore, it is necessary to acquire a profound understanding of the new development concept, and to continuously enrich farmers through sharing in terms of accelerating the improvement of the institutionalized poverty reduction system in the new era, actively building a green development system of agriculture and animal husbandry in special rural areas, and striving to create a fair and complementary urban and rural infrastructure and basic public service system.

Common prosperity is the essential requirement of the socialist system, and one of the important goals of China’s modernization. Common prosperity is a long-term goal, and its realization is a long-term development course. This paper expounds on the connotations and fundamental requirements of common prosperity, discusses the challenges anticipated in realizing common prosperity in China from the perspectives of income gap, property distribution gap and public services, and expatiates common prosperity as a long-term and complex course involving many difficulties. Next, this paper proposes a detailed plan for the realization of common prosperity by reforming the income distribution system and promoting the equalization of basic public services, with the view of improving the capacity of all the people to develop in a comprehensive manner.

The discussion of common prosperity in this paper revolves around the following two aspects. First, the promotion of common prosperity requires a solid material foundation; solving poverty as measured by the absolute income standard serves as the basic requirement of becoming rich; the future rural relative poverty is a common problem and challenge that most of China’s provinces are facing; and increasing farmers’ income is a problem that must be solved within the framework of integrated urban-rural development. Second, narrowing the income gap is one of the essential requirements of common prosperity; narrowing the income gap to a certain level and achieving the unity of the development and sharing and the harmony of efficiency and fairness constitute the essential component of “common”; and the current urban-rural absolute income gap in China remains large, which violates the concept of shared development, is not conducive to sharing the achievements of economic development by the people as a whole, inhibits economic growth, and hinders the construction of a new development paradigm. Therefore, firmly grasping the mainline of integrated urban-rural development, strengthening overall planning and top-level design, and compensating for the institutional disadvantages of the dual division of urban and rural areas should be the main strategic focuses for promoting common prosperity in China.

The practice of tourism poverty alleviation in China has gone through the traditional tourism poverty alleviation stage and tourism targeted poverty alleviation stage and has now entered the post-poverty alleviation stage. The research regarding the corresponding stages of tourism poverty alleviation exhibits typical stage characteristics and differences in research content, research area, and research perspective. Clarifying the characteristics of different stages of tourism poverty alleviation research will aid in grasping the context of tourism poverty alleviation research as a whole and provide some theoretical reference for the trend of tourism poverty alleviation research in the post-poverty alleviation era.