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"View China's role in the world fairly
(By Zhong Xuanli)
What has China's development brought to the world? It's not a difficult question, but the United States has recently answered it in an absurd way. Some American observers think that what has come with a rising China are economic aggression, geopolitical expansion and damaged international rules. This is now taken as the official line of the US government. US President Donald Trump said on Sept 17 that Chinese practices "plainly constitute a grave threat to the long-term health and prosperity of the United States economy". On Oct 4, Vice-President Mike Pence attributed China's economic success largely to "American investment in China", saying the US rebuilt China over the last 25 years. But that is not true.
Driver of global growth, not economic aggressor
In his speech, Pence accused China of carrying out "economic aggression", saying China has used "an arsenal of policies inconsistent with free and fair trade" that "have built Beijing's manufacturing base, at the expense of its competitors－especially the United States of America". He alleged that these actions of China have contributed to the huge trade deficit with the US and urged China to change the "unfair" practices.
But trade is a two-way activity based on mutual agreement. China has never sought to buy from or sell to the US by force, neither has it eyed a trade surplus only. According to the UN statistics, the US exported $129.89 billion worth of goods to China in 2017, an increase of 577 percent compared with 2001, much higher than the 112 percent rise in US global exports over the same period. This happened against the backdrop of tight US restrictions on the types of goods exported to China, especially on high-tech products.
In that sense, a slight easing of the restrictions would reduce the US trade deficit significantly. According to a study by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in April 2017, if the US were to liberalize its export barriers against China to the same level as those applicable to Brazil, the US-China trade deficit would be narrowed by up to 24 percent.
Similarly, should the US adjust its export barriers against China according to those applicable to France, its trade deficit with China would decrease by as much as 34 percent. Obviously the US has witnessed such a high trade deficit because it doesn't want to sell products to China, not the other way around.
The service trade between China and the US also needs to be counted in. US statistics show that from 2007 to 2017, US service exports to China grew by 3.4 times from $13.14 billion to $57.63 billion, while its service exports to other countries and regions increased by 1.8 times. The US surplus with China in services multiplied by a factor of $30 billion to $40.2 billion.
The gains and losses of China-US trade, being part of economic globalization, should be calculated from a global perspective. Over the past decades the US has moved its manufacturing industry such as processing and assembly to other parts of the world while keeping services such as design and marketing. China, being the largest receiver of international industrial relocation, has a large part of its exported goods actually produced by multinational companies from countries such as the US. In the value chain, multinational companies take the majority of profits while Chinese ones only take a tiny share for their processing payment.
With dynamic development, China has become an important engine for international economic growth. China's contribution to world economic growth has stayed around 30 percent since 2013, topping other countries, and reached 34.6 percent in 2017, twice that of the US.
China's development has also created a larger market for the world. From 2001 to 2017, China's imports of goods grew at an average rate of 13.5 percent, twice that of the world's average. In the same period China's service imports rose by 16.7 percent on average, 2.7 times that of the international average. From 2011 to 2017, the share of China's total imports of goods and services in the world's total increased from 8.4 percent to 10.1 percent, while that of the US dropped by 0.5 percentage point in the same period.
China is also an important creator of jobs worldwide. So far it has set up more than 80 overseas economic and trade cooperation zones in countries along the Belt and Road routes, creating about 244,000 local jobs. And, according to Ernst& Young, China created over 130,000 jobs in Africa from 2005 to 2016, more than three times the number of jobs created by the US. And a study by the International Labour Organization released in 2017 found that between 1990 and 2016, at least 1.8 million jobs were created as a result of China's trade, investment and infrastructure projects in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Some Americans allege that China has stolen American jobs because some American factories were relocated to China. Yet this allegation doesn't hold water. A report by the US-China Business Council released in early 2017 said the bilateral trade relationship actually supported roughly 2.6 million jobs in the US. And the US has lost more than 7 million factory jobs since manufacturing employment peaked in 1979, with 88 percent of the lost jobs taken by robots and other homegrown factors that reduce factories' need for human labor, according to a 2015 study by Ball State University's Center for Business and Economic Research. Where to set up factories is decided by US companies on profit-driven consideration, not by China.
It's fair to say that China has not been an aggressor in its development, but a contributor to the world and a strong supporter of the UN Millennium Development Goals and 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. It has demonstrated a new path toward modernization for developing countries that are home to more than 80 percent of global population, and provided an option never seen before for countries that want both development and independence. Raphael Tuju, secretary-general of the ruling Jubilee Party of Kenya, said that China's achievement has no precedent in the history of mankind and gives African people "a flicker of hope and light at the end of the tunnel".
China's development achievement is not driven by American investment, but the diligence and hard work of 1.3 billion Chinese people. Even in terms of investment, the US is not the largest investor in China. Since the 1980s, US investment has accounted for just 7-10 percent of foreign investment in China, while it has in return earned handsome profits.
Builder of world peace that does not seek geopolitical expansion
The US has accused China of conducting "debt diplomacy" to expand its influence, and Pence specifically referred to Sri Lanka. However, Karunasena Kodituwakku, Sri Lanka's ambassador to China, said in early October that "If anybody is saying that the Chinese government gave its money to put Sri Lanka into a 'debt trap', I don't agree with that. It's an absolutely wrong conclusion". The ambassador clarified that the security of Hambantota Port is entirely a matter for Sri Lankan security forces. Unfortunately in the US' geopolitical mindset, a country is an ally or a rival, there is no other option.
Instabilities and uncertainties are currently the main threats to world peace. To tell threats from efforts to promote world peace, we need to tell behavior that creates conflicts from safeguarding stability. The Belt and Road Initiative accused by the US of being a scheme with "geopolitical intent" has attracted 103 countries and international organizations to sign 118 cooperation agreements under the Belt and Road framework with China. The initiative, together with its core concepts, has been incorporated into outcome documents of important international mechanisms such as the United Nations, G20, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, and Shanghai Cooperation Organization. It is in fact a "chorus" beyond zero-sum mentality in the spirit of "peaceful cooperation, openness and inclusiveness, mutual learning, mutual benefit and win-win results", fundamentally different from the concept of geopolitical expansion.
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