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Opinion | How China is drawing on its own history to champion globalisation, peace and prosperity
- Peace makes development possible and decent lives help peace endure. China, having forged its own path, makes it clear in its new white paper that, unlike the US, it champions globalisation, peace and better lives for everyone
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As US President Donald Trump harangued world leaders about anti-globalisation at the 74th UN General Assembly, China was publishing a white paper, “China and the World in the New Era”. In it, Beijing expresses its intention to fully engage in globalisation and contribute to peace and development.
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It is important to note that China’s views of and relationship with the rest of the world have deep roots in its own history and experience. It was in the mid-19th century that Chinese people started to realise the tremendous gap between the West and themselves in economic development and industrial technology.
Since then, the pursuit of socioeconomic development and modernisation has been Chinese people’s main, if not only, concern.
In Fudan University professor Tang Shiping’s “new development triangle” framework, long and sustained economic development must be supported by a powerful and critical state, sound institutional systems and good economic policies. China’s experience clearly reflects such a dynamic, with its party-state highly instrumental in its developmental process.
Indeed, economists and political scientists studying China often refer to the state’s action in coordinating economic policies, mobilising and allocating economic resources, and creating and building institutions, such as through market integration and enhanced regulation.
The late leader Deng Xiaoping would describe this as reflecting “the strength of socialism”, meaning that the party-state can rationally plan and manage development to “serve the people in a better way”.
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