Why doom predictors always get it wrong when it comes to China
By Yao Shujie (chinadaily.com.cn) Updated: 2016-02-01 10:09So why do doom predictors always get it wrong when it comes to China?
Firstly, some pessimists always look at China's short term challenges and ignore its long term development capability and potential. Short term challenges and difficulties are temporal, they can be overcome if the government and the people have a strong will for success.
Secondly, some pessimists do not understand that the Chinese government is far better than they thought, and that political stability is the basic foundation of China's success.
Thirdly, doom predictors of China underestimate the ability and determination of the Chinese people who are not only hard working and intelligent, but also resilient to all kinds of challenges and shocks.
China today is different from its past. The economy is well above 10 trillion US dollars, second only to the US, twice as large as Japan, and four times as large as India. A 6.9% growth is more than one-quarter of India's annual GDP, and bigger than a medium-sized economy in the world.
China's richest city, Shenzhen, erected from a small fishing village in 1980, now has a population of over 10 million people. Its per capita GDP is higher than that of Taiwan and is still growing at nearly 8% per year. China's biggest city by population, Chongqing, has over 30 million people. The city's GDP expanded by 11% in 2015 and the government's plan is to achieve 10% growth in 2016.
The Chinese economic fundamentals are sound and robust: unemployment rate is low, people's incomes are growing faster than GDP, income inequality is narrowing and energy intensity is declining.
If those pessimists were in China, they would see that all the Chinese regions are still ambitious in making their 13th Five Year Plan, which is to sustain China's economic growth at a much higher rate than many other economies in the world. The policy objective is to build an all-round well-off society and to eliminate absolute poverty by 2020.
The author is professor of economics at Chongqing University and Nottingham University.
The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and don't represent views of China Daily website.
