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Inside Out & Outside In
OpinionComment
David Dodwell
David Dodwell

Outside In | Who says China is retreating into splendid self-isolation?

  • China’s trade and FDI numbers continue to rise and its industrial policies aim to strengthen the domestic economy and plug manufacturing vulnerabilities – not decouple
  • For more proof, look to its long-standing engagement with international bodies and the outreach of its Belt and Road Initiative

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Visitors take photos with Jinbao, the mascot of the China International Import Expo in Shanghai, November 8. Chinese importers inked deals amounting to US$70.72 billion. What evidence here of the xenophobic shunning of foreign goods? Photo: Xinhua
David Dodwell

Once upon a time there was a narrative: after three decades of opening up to the global economy, winning access to international markets and capturing what intellectual property it could, China is reverting to a centuries-old preference for self-isolation.

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In deciding to decouple from global markets, using its Made in China 2025 policy to strengthen the capacity of, and loyalty to, local companies, and a dual circulation strategy to bolster local consumption as the main growth driver, Beijing has made it harder for foreign companies to sell to or operate in China, and for foreigners to live and work there.

Therefore, Western economies must prepare for the worst, economically and militarily, as China recoils from global cooperation in the belief the world needs China more than it needs the world.

But there is a small problem. The narrative is false – even as the Financial Times’ Gideon Rachman gave it a robust airing recently after China’s President Xi Jinping opted not to fly to the G20 and COP26 summits.

“Xi’s dismissive attitude to the climate talks was not so much Middle Kingdom as middle finger,” said Rachman. “The Chinese leader’s refusal to travel to Glasgow for COP26 … is part of a broader pattern of national self-isolation. “The effects on international business [of China’s self-isolation] are already apparent. China continues to trade and invest with the outside world. But business ties are fraying.”

Setting aside Rachman’s contestable claims that international executives are leaving China and that Hong Kong’s role as a global business centre has taken a battering, his claims of China’s self-isolation are emphatically misplaced.
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