Fierce yet fragile?
Fareed Zakaria has talked in glowing terms about the transformation of China’s economy before. Here is the latest installment, which calls China “a fierce yet fragile superpower”:
On issue after issue, China has become the second most important country on the planet. Consider what’s happened already this past year. In 2007 China contributed more to global growth than the United States, the first time another country had done so since at least the 1930s. It also became the world’s largest consumer, eclipsing the United States in four of the five basic food, energy and industrial commodities…
Lawrence Summers has recently pointed out that during the Industrial Revolution the average European’s living standards rose about 50 percent over the course of his lifetime (then about 40 years). In Asia, principally China, he calculates, the average person’s living standards are set to rise by 10,000 percent in one lifetime! The scale and pace of growth in China has been staggering, utterly unprecedented in history—and it has produced equally staggering change. In two decades China has experienced the same degree of industrialization, urbanization and social transformation as Europe did in two centuries.
Recall what China looked like only 30 years ago. It was a devastated country, one of the world’s poorest, with a totalitarian state. It was just emerging from Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, which had destroyed universities, schools and factories, all to revitalize the revolution. Since then 400 million people have been lifted out of poverty in China — about 75 percent of the world’s total poverty reduction over the last century. The country has built new cities and towns, roads and ports, and is planning for the future in impressive detail.
“planning for the future in impressive detail.” Hmmm. Some of that “planning” appears to involve a lot of industrial and other spying on the West. And other hijinks. And unsavory deals with some companies.
And let’s not overlook some items that cut several ways. WSJ: “Wang Chengming, former chairman of Shanghai Electric Group Co., was given the [death] sentence Thursday for taking part ‘in collective embezzlement and taking bribes,’ the official Xinhua news agency said. The suspended sentence means the death sentence will be commuted to life imprisonment if Mr. Wang shows good behavior for the next two years.”
Mr. Zakaria’s title speaks of a “fierce yet fragile” China. We’re still looking for the “fragile” part.