What Does China’s Development Mean?

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. 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 Washingtonbased 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 AsiaPacific 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 safe-