China and other major economies such as the US, Germany, Japan and India are faced with a host of economic challenges caused by a diverse range of factors, the fulcral challenge being that the world economy lacks growth momentum and the international community is experiencing geopolitical turmoil.
And it appears that each time the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is responding to new challenges affecting its economy, the West’s infamous “Chinese collapse” theory is rearing its ugly head again.
An article by the US newspaper The Hill last month was headlined “China’s economic collapse carries a warning about our own future.” As if the “collapse” were a fait accompli.
Other articles published recently in the West asked “Has the Chinese economy hit the wall?” (East Asia Forum) or “Is China’s economy about to go bust?” (The Strategist).
One of the best-known proponents of the infamous theory is Hong Kong-born, US-based historian Gordon H. Chang (章家敦) whose “The Coming Collapse of China” was published in 2001. He predicted that the country would collapse in 2011. When 2011 was almost over, Chang admitted that his prediction was wrong but insisted it was off by only a year, asserting in Foreign Policy that the Communist Party of China (CPC) would fall in 2012. Consequently, he made the magazine’s “10 worst predictions of the year” twice.* What a record for an academic!
I would suggest Chang, who is in his 70s, write a book titled “The Collapse of My ‘The Coming Collapse of China’ Theory” in which he could explain why he got it so horribly wrong.
Richard McGregor, an Australian expert on China, wrote an article titled “The collapse of the ‘Chinese collapse’ theory” back in 2018.
“In Japan, they call it ‘the collapse of the ‘Chinese collapse’ theory.’ The line, which harks back to more than a decade of dire predictions about China, is a joking way to describe the state of the Middle Kingdom’s economy.”**
Well, the “collapse of the Chinese collapse theory” isn’t a “joke” – it’s a fact.
Shanghai-based lawyer Dieter Gao (高成所) wrote in a Xinhua commentary released on LinkedIn last month that the “’China economic collapse theory’ is doomed to collapse again”***, pointing out that speaking ill of others “will not make oneself better, nor will it disturb the progress of China’s steady economic development.”
In his commentary, Gao quoted an article from Spiked, an online magazine based in the United Kingdom, as saying that as Western countries are mired in economic and political difficulties they hype up pessimism about China in order to get “some comfort” from predicting the Chinese economy’s imminent collapse.
The “Chinese collapse” theory is sheer bunkum and balderdash. And neither is China’s economy a “time bomb”, as bombastically claimed by US President Joe Biden earlier this year.
Needless to say that the collapse of any major economy such as the one of the United States or China’s would be a disaster for not just their residents but the rest of the world.
The fact is that China’s economy is going through a development adjustment process such as its transformation from high-speed growth to high-quality growth, apart from its ongoing recovery from the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
China’s GDP recorded 5.5 percent growth in the first half of the year, the fastest growth among the world’s major economies.
The Washington-based International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicts that China’s economy will grow by 5.2 percent this year, contributing about one-third of global growth. China accounts for around 18 percent of the world’s population.
Luigi Gambardella, president of the ChinaEU association, told Xinhua in a recent interview that “the resilience of the Chinese economy can be attributed to targeted policies designed to bolster growth, such as the recent unveiling of 31 measures by the central government to stimulate the development of private companies.”
Nasdaq Vice Chairman Robert McCooey told the US China Business Forum in New York recently that people in China are continuing to set up innovative businesses, “and it shows why the Chinese economy continues to be strong for decades to come.”
Spiked, the British Internet magazine, said in a recent article that China’s resilience to economic disruptions is different to the West primarily because of the strength of its production fundamentals. The article pointed out that China now leads the world in the production of electric vehicles, electric car batteries, 5G telecommunications equipment, commercial drones, Internet of Things (IoT) devices, mobile payments and solar cells, which all are “indicators of China’s continuing economic durability.”
I am quoting these articles to show how nonsensical the West’s claims that China’s economy is collapsing or resembling a “time bomb” are.
In other words, China’s economic growth even during its ongoing post-COVID-19 recovery process, which has its normal twists and turns, continues to defy Western doomsayers.
My personal experience, after living and working in China (Hong Kong and Macau) for over four decades, is that China’s economic development is based on three main factors: strong resilience, great potential and remarkable vitality.
I hope that more and more people in the West, political decision-makers and business leaders in particular, realise that the “Chinese collapse” theory is a just basket case of wishful thinking, jealousy and ignorance.
Xie Feng, China’s ambassador to the US, wrote in a recent opinion article published by The Washington Post that “more American friends have come to realise that the notion that China could economically collapse… is utter fantasy.”
For our planet to be able to tackle a string of pressing problems, such as climate issues, public health and poverty, the West needs to understand that all this is impossible without close cooperation with China. The West, of course, is led by the United States.
That’s why President Xi Jinping was absolutely right when he told a delegation from the US Senate yesterday that the state of China-US relations would impact humanity’s destiny.
“How China and the United States get along with each other in the face of a world of change and turmoil will determine the future and destiny of mankind,” Xi said as he met with the bipartisan delegation headed by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People.
Let’s hope that the US senators got the message… which would benefit the development of the world into a community with a shared future for mankind –China’s top foreign-policy goal.
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Coming_Collapse_of_China
**https://www.lowyinstitute.org/publications/collapse-chinese-collapse-theory (article republished by the Lowy Institute)
***https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/xinhua-commentary-chinas-economic-collapse-theory-doomed-gao%E9%AB%98/
– Harald Brüning
