The world must hope that China won’t run the world economy in the same way as the west
by Kishore Mahbubani / May 14, 2018 / Leave a commentPublished in June 2018 issue of Prospect Magazine
The IMF—due a move to Beijing soon. Photo: IMF (WIKIMEDIA COMMONS)
Napoleon was only half-right when he warned more than two centuries ago that, “China is a sleeping lion. Let her sleep, for when she wakes she will shake the world.” China has woken up and is indeed shaking the world. But it is shaking the world gently. Why?
Chinese history has mirrored that of Europe. Until the Industrial Revolution, the European elites lived well while the masses suffered brutish conditions. The Chinese masses, by contrast, suffered the same plight until as recently as 1978. After that year, when Deng Xiaoping launched the Four Modernisations Programme, China experienced the greatest uplift of the human condition in history: 800m people were rescued from absolute poverty. Infant mortality plummeted. Virtually every child in China goes to school today.
How did China accomplish this? It made a massive U-turn. In the past, China built great walls and shut itself in. In 1978, China’s economy opened up and integrated itself with the world. An even more momentous decision was to join the WTO in 2001. The subsequent explosion of the Chinese economy was phenomenal. In 2000, America’s economy was 8.5 times that of China. By 2015, it was only 1.6 times larger. Within a decade, China is likely to have the world’s largest economy.
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