World
What Does China's Development Mean?
China has contributed to the global development and world peace through its own progress
  ·  2018-10-29  ·   Source: NO. 44 NOVEMBER 1, 2018
Chinese and U.S.scholars share views on China's development and China-U.S.relationship at a forum hosted by Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in Boston on October 15(XINHUA)
In a statement made on September 17, U.S. President Donald Trump accused China of "constituting a grave threat to the long-term health and prosperity of the U.S. economy." What's more, in a speech on October 4, Vice President Mike Pence falsely declared that China's "success was driven by American investment in China."

What has China's development brought to the world? This should not be a difficult question to answer. People's Daily released an article highlighting China's contribution to the rest of the world. An excerpted version follows:

How should we measure China's contribution to the world through its development? First, by the extent China has pushed forward the world's development; second, by what China has done to safeguard world peace; and third, as far as the world order is concerned, whether China has undermined international rules.

Driving global development

Washington is wrong to claim that it is "at a ($200-billion) disadvantage" and that it has been "economically invaded" by doing business with China just because it has a huge trade deficit. China-U.S. trade relations are mutually voluntary and complementary. China has never looked for a forced trade relationship with the United States nor a trade surplus.

United Nations statistics indicate that in 2017, U.S. exports of goods to China amounted to $129.89 billion, a 577-percent increase from $19.18 billion in 2001, much higher than the average growth rate of overall exports that stood at 112 percent in the same period. It is noteworthy that the growth was achieved as the United States strictly restricted the categories of exports to China and banned the sale of certain technologies.

A report released by the Washington-based Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in April 2017 said: If the United States were to liberalize its export barriers against China to the same level as those applicable to Brazil or France, the U.S. trade deficit with China would be narrowed by up to 24 percent or 35 percent. The key point is not that China "does not buy," but that the United States does not sell.

We should also consider trade in services. U.S. data shows that its service exports to China increased 3.4 times from $13.14 billion in 2007 to $57.63 billion in 2017, while its service exports to other countries and regions increased by only 1.8 times. The United States achieved a surplus of $40.2 billion in its trade in services with China in 2017, 30 times higher than in 2007.

When it comes to China-U.S. trade, it's incorrect to focus on only these two countries, since China-U.S. trade is part of economic globalization and thus the calculation should be based in this context. While keeping product design and marketing on its own territory, the United States has been moving its processing and assembly lines overseas in recent decades, with China being the largest host country of this global industrial transfer. A large number of Chinese exports to the United States are actually U.S.-designed products manufactured in China. Chinese companies get paid for product manufacturing, earning much less than transnational companies. Thus, it is unfair to say China has gained more profits than the United States.

Instead of being an "economic aggression," China's development provides great power for global economic growth. China has maintained a contribution of about 30 percent to global economic growth since 2013, the highest in the world. In 2017, that figure reached 34.6 percent, almost twice of the United States. China's development has also expanded the global market. From 2001 to 2017, the growth of goods imported by China rose by 13.5 percent on average, twice as fast as the global average. In the same period, the average growth of services in trade imported by China was 16.7 percent, 2.7 times of the global average. From 2011 to 2017, China's total share of imports and services increased by 1.7 percentage points, from 8.4 percent to 10.1 percent, while the United States' share declined by 0.5 percentage points over the same period.

China is also an important job creator. It has co-built more than 80 economic and trade cooperation zones with countries and regions along the Belt and Road, creating 244,000 local jobs. According to Ernst & Young, China created more than 130,000 jobs in Africa from 2005 to 2016, tripling the number created by the United States between 1990 and 2016, China created 1.8 million jobs across Latin America and the Caribbean, according to an International Labor Organization report released in June 2017, which was titled Effects of China on the Quantity and Quality of Jobs in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Some people in the United States claim that China is "stealing" U.S. jobs, because some factories have been moved to China. The remarks are biased and groundless. According to a 2017 U.S.-China Business Council estimate, in 2015, U.S. exports to China and China-U.S.

two-way investment supported 2.6 million jobs in the United States. A study by Ball State University found that the United States has lost more than 7 million factory jobs since manufacturing employment peaked in 1979, but the vast majority of the lost jobs—88 percent—were taken by robots and other homegrown factors that reduce factories' need for human labor. It proves that U.S. job losses have no connection with China. Where U.S. companies assign their factories is motivated by profit, and no one can control their decisions.

Instead of "economic aggression," China's development has promoted the development of the world by expanding its market, creating employment and contributing wisdom. It strongly supports the UN Millennium Development Goals and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

China's development has led the way for developing countries—which account for more than 80 percent of the world's total population—to modernize, and has provided new choices to nations who want to accelerate their development while maintaining their independence at the same time.

Building world peace

Currently, instability and uncertainty is becoming a major threat to world peace. The Belt and Road Initiative is demonized as "geopolitical expansion" by Washington, but since it was put forward five years ago, 103 countries and international organizations have signed 118 cooperation agreements related to the initiative. Its core concepts have been absorbed as outcome documents by major international mechanisms such as the UN, the G20, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The Belt and Road Initiative is actually a "chorus" that advocates peace and cooperation, openness and inclusiveness, mutual learning and mutual benefit, and transcends the zero-sum mentality. It is an international cooperation concept fundamentally different from geopolitical expansion.

In today's world, China is actively safeguarding world peace and security through its development and prosperity. China advocates and has always persisted in the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, which was jointly proposed by China, India and Myanmar in the 1950s. China is the largest contributor of peacekeeping troops among the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. By the first half of 2017, China had accumulatively deployed more than 35,000 peacekeeping military personnel to 24 UN peacekeeping missions, praised as "a key element and force in peacekeeping actions."

Internally, China is among one of the world's major economies that enjoys stable public order and security. According to the 2018 Global Law and Order report by Gallup, a U.S. consultancy, China ranked 10th on the list of the world's safest travel destinations, the only major economy among the top 10. According to authoritative agencies, from 2014 to 2017, deaths resulting from gun shootings in the United States grew at a rate of about 5 percent. In 2017, shooting victims reached 61,813, with 15,637 deaths. Every day, 170 people die from firearm injuries.

In the meantime, the United States keeps launching wars in the name of "safeguarding peace." Since World War II (WWII), Washington has launched or been involved in more than 30 wars, amounting to a new war almost every two years. Its addiction to wars has brought huge disasters to the world and even to its own people. It launched wars against Iraq in 2003 and 2012 on groundless accusations, which indirectly resulted in the deaths of 655,000 Iraqis. In addition, the two wars also claimed the lives of 2,765 U.S. soldiers and caused the disability of some 20,000 more. U.S. meddling in the Syrian war has led to the massive displacement of local residents. By August 2018, Syrian refugees registered by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees had reached 5.6 million. Since Washington mounted its war against Afghanistan in 2001, more than 300,000 people have died or been injured. Today, the country remains a bleeding wound.

New factors, including economic security, have become an important part of world peace. A higher level of cooperation depends on lower trade barriers, which in turn consolidates economic stability. Never triggering trade disputes, an increasingly open China has fully fulfilled its World Trade Organization (WTO) accession commitments. China has reinforced its aid to other developing members, especially to least developed countries (LDCs), to bridge the South-North development gap. By March 2018, it had accorded zero tariff treatment on 97 percent of all tariff lines to 36 LDCs that have diplomatic relations with China and have completed exchanges of notes.

This year, China announced measures to open further to the outside world, sharply relaxing control on market access and accelerating the opening up of the service sector, particularly the financial sector.

In contrast, in the name of "reciprocal opening up" and "national security," the United States has set up the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), which includes its intelligence department. It keeps expanding the content of "national security," using the concept as a tool for the United States to block the entrance of foreign companies. In 2017 alone, CFIUS restricted more than 20 foreign companies from entering the U.S. market on the grounds of "national security," with half of them being Chinese companies. Both China and the United States are members of the WTO, thus problems related to trade should be resolved under the WTO framework. However, the United States is dealing with foreign trade frictions aggressively according to its domestic laws, disregarding WTO dispute settlement mechanisms. It has abandoned the fundamental principles of the WTO and violated tariff concessions disregarding the principles it once promised to uphold.

Safeguarding world order

As a founding member of the United Nations, China was directly involved in the building of the international order after WWII. According to the Yearbook of International Organizations 2017-2018, which was released by Brussel-based Union of International Associations, China's participation rate in international organizations is approaching France and Germany which boast the highest levels, and its growth rate is the highest among the world's major economies.

More countries expect China to play a bigger role in global governance. China's Belt and Road Initiative and the establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank are helpful supplements to the current international order. China has also played host to major diplomatic events. They include the APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting, the 2016 G20 Hangzhou Summit, the first Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, and the Ninth BRICS Summit in Xiamen. China is hoping to see other countries join its rapid development, a move that is hailed by the rest of the world and is winning more friends.

In contrast, the United States, which played a dominant role in setting up the post-war international order, is now busy undermining it by continuously quitting, threatening to quit and even abolishing international agreements and organizations. So far, Washington has pulled out of the Paris Agreement designed to deal with global climate change, the UN Human Rights Council, UNESCO, the Global Compact for Migration and the Iran nuclear deal, among others. Led by the United States, the G7 once played an important role in global governance. Today, however, it is attracting the world's attention because of its internal conflicts. Moreover, Washington is planning to rebuild the order that was long-established in auto and steel industries in Western countries, shocking the European Union and Japan. All of this boils down to the fact that China is safeguarding the international order while the United States is undermining it.

Copyedited by Rebeca Toledo

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