Human society is constantly developing in the movement of contradictions, and the principal contradictions in society are the main root causes and concentrated reflections of various social contradictions, and occupy a dominant position in the movement of social contradictions.

The changes in the principal contradictions in China's society in the new era are historical changes that have a bearing on the overall situation, and profoundly reflect the new characteristics of China's social production and social needs, which are determined by China's objective reality at the present stage.

After 40 years of reform and opening up, the level of China's social productive forces has been markedly improved on the whole, and the social productive forces have entered the forefront of the world in many aspects.

Since 2010, China's GDP has ranked second in the world, the total import and export of goods and the total trade in services have ranked second in the world, foreign investment and utilization of foreign capital have ranked second and third in the world respectively, some areas of infrastructure construction are far ahead, and the total mileage of high-speed rail operation, total mileage of expressways and port throughput have ranked first in the world.

The production capacity of industrial and agricultural products has increased by a large margin, and the production capacity of more than 220 major industrial and agricultural products has steadily ranked first in the world, and there are even large surpluses of some products.

This shows that China's long-standing shortage economy and insufficient supply have undergone a fundamental change

"Backward social production" is no longer in line with reality. The people's living standards have improved markedly, and their yearning for a better life has become stronger, which has not only put forward higher requirements for material and cultural life, but also has increasingly increased requirements for democracy, rule of law, fairness, justice, security, and the environment.

Since the reform and opening up, China's people's living standards have continued to reach a new level, and the per capita GDP has increased from 385 yuan in 1978 to 59,660 yuan in 2017, with an average annual growth rate of about 9.5%, which has reached the level of an upper-middle-income country; The per capita disposable income of urban residents and the per capita disposable income of rural residents increased from 343.4 yuan and 133.6 yuan in 1978 to 36,396 yuan and 13,432 yuan in 2017, respectively. The incidence of rural poverty dropped sharply from 97.5 percent in 1978 to less than 3.1 percent in 2017, well below the world average. The education level of residents has been continuously improved, the nine-year compulsory education has been fully universalized, and the gross enrollment rate of tertiary education reached 45.7% in 2017, nearly 10 percentage points higher than the world average. The health status of urban and rural residents has improved significantly, with the average life expectancy of residents reaching 76.7 years in 2017, higher than the world average.

With the continuous improvement of the people's living standards, the needs of the people are diversified, multi-layered and multi-faceted, and they look forward to better education, more stable jobs, more satisfactory incomes, more reliable social security, higher levels of medical and health services, more comfortable living conditions, a more beautiful environment, and a richer spiritual and cultural life.

This shows that the needs of the masses of the people have gone beyond the scope and level of material culture in terms of field and focus

"Material and cultural needs" can no longer truly and comprehensively reflect the aspirations and demands of the masses of the people. There are many factors that affect the satisfaction of people's needs for a better life, but the main one is the problem of unbalanced and inadequate development, and other problems are caused or derived from this in the final analysis.

Unbalanced development mainly refers to the unbalanced development of various regions, fields and aspects

The imbalance of "one leg is long and one leg is short" restricts the improvement of the overall development level. Insufficient development mainly refers to the problem of insufficient development in some regions, some fields, and some aspects, and the task of development is still very heavy.

From the point of view of social productive forces, China has not only the world's advanced or even world-leading productive forces, but also a large number of traditional, relatively backward, or even primitive productive forces, and the level and distribution of productive forces in different regions and fields are very uneven.

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Judging from the overall layout of the "five-in-one", major achievements have been made in economic and social development, but there are still shortcomings in various fields, and there are still many outstanding problems in some aspects.

From the perspective of urban and rural development and regional development, there is still a large gap in the level of development between urban and rural areas in China, and between the eastern, central, and western regions.

From the point of view of income distribution, although China's per capita national income is in the upper middle ranks of the world, and the vast majority of the people have solved the problem of food and clothing, the gap in income distribution is still quite large, tens of millions of people in rural areas have not yet been lifted out of poverty, and there are still many people in difficulty in urban areas.

These problems of unbalanced and inadequate development hinder each other and bring about many social contradictions and problems, which are the main root cause of the interweaving of various social contradictions and social problems at the present stage.

Development is a dynamic process, imbalance and inadequacy will always exist, and balance is relative, but when imbalance and inadequacy become the main aspect of the main contradiction in society after a certain stage of development, we must make efforts to understand and resolve it, otherwise it will restrict the overall situation of development.