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China: threat or opportunity?
A somewhat optimistic, can-do article about China seen as a free-market challenge/opportunity. Ok, might be an apologist. Long, needs p.49, see link for notes.The rise of China could be good for the West, if only it would rise to the challenge. China has come a very long way in the past 25 years. The land of the Giant Panda is also the land of giant numbers and achievements: China's population represents more than one fifth of the world's population: 1.3 billion people. Between 1978 and 2001 China's average growth rate of GDP per capita was at the top of the world's growth performance in this period (1). China's exports grew in value terms by almost 15 times between 1978 and 2001 (2). In 2002 and 2003, China was, second only to the USA, the world's largest recipient of Foreign Direct Investment (3). In 1978 almost one in three Chinese people were 'absolutely poor', according to the World Bank. This fell to under one in 20 people by 1998 (4). In 1982 one fifth of China's population lived in urban areas, and almost one in four people were illiterate. By 2000, over one third lived in urban areas and illiteracy levels had fallen to one in 15 people (5). Add to this China's industrial accomplishments: the Three Gorges Dam is the world's largest hydroelectric dam project; China has the world's longest steel-arch bridge; and Beijing Airport will be the biggest in the world by 2008. In 2001 China produced 96 million electric fans, 41 million colour TV sets, and 25 million mobile phones (6). Yet despite these phenomenal advances, Western commentators interpret trends and events with great pessimism. An acknowledgement of the incredible achievements of China in the past two-and-a-half decades is generally accompanied with a statement of the dangers that the transformation brings. On UK Radio Four's flagship current affairs programme Today in late 2004, Tim Luard, former Beijing correspondent for the BBC, echoed the view that the achievements are actually a source of anxiety: 'The sheer scale of China's economic transformation is matched only by the size of the new challenges and dangers it has created (7)'. The apparent dangers of China's rising wealth and power include the danger to the environment caused by pollution; the danger to employment and the Western economies caused by China's increasing competitiveness; and the possible military aggression of a rising power. As Stephen Roach, managing director and chief economist of Morgan Stanley, one of the largest investment banks in the USA, pointed out in 2004: 'A fickle world has changed its mind about China again. A year ago, the miracle of Chinese growth was widely seen as a bonanza for an otherwise sluggish global economy. Today China is being cast as a threat - in effect, it has become a scapegoat for many of the intractable problems that a dysfunctional world has been unable to solve.' (8) Today, the rise of China tends to be viewed in the West purely as a threat. Yet there is no reason why the West could not turn this challenge into an opportunity. China's growing economic power is a challenge for the West, but a challenge that the West can either turn to its advantage or to which it can succumb, by attempting to batten down the hatches and retreat. Perhaps this challenge is just what the West needs to kick it out of its doom-laden sense that things are getting worse and worse. Preparing to meet China's 'can-do' culture could serve to regenerate a sense of ambition and experimentation within Western societies. Although there are negative aspects of China's economic transformation, these are resolvable. More of a problem is the way that the West is transporting its own concerns into China - its loss of confidence in its own system, its embarrassment of success, lack of entrepreneurship, and attachment to the environmentalist orthodoxy. So what is going on with China? The West's main fears about this rising power tell us more about the preoccupations and double standards of commentators 'over here' than the life 'over there'. But by examining these fears, we can cut through some of the myths about China, and approach a better understanding of the realities. Posted by: anonymous5089 2005-10-20 |
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