New Chinese practice: Blowing its own trumpet

C doing something that it never used to do: boasting about its achievements and comparing itself favorably with the United - lup poll that showed more people in the world approved of Chinese than American leadership in the age of Donald Trump.

While the US economy grew a respectable 2.5 percent in 2017, an improvement over the 2.1 percent of 2016, it was way outdistanced by Chinese economic growth of 6.9 percent.

Still, China is only the world’s second largest economy. In actual numbers, the size of the Chinese by the end of 2017, smaller than

Bureau of Statistics reported that, if calculated in purchasing power parity terms, the Chinese econo Both the World Bank and IMF have used PPP to calculate China’s - ogy, China’s economy is already bigger than that of the US.

Clearly, China is doing well for itself and, according to its state media, it is also helping other countries by continuing to reform and by opening up its economy.

“China will briskly foster new growth drivers, improve technological innovation [and] push for according to the Central Economic Work Conference held in December.

- throughs is the development of a new rice variety that not only tastes good but produces high reported January 18.

Among the wonders of Chinese inventions is the world’s largest fully steerable radio telescope, which reportedly will be able to scan three- quarters of the sky,

China is also helping other countries to achieve their goals, for - cent engineering projects, including a water recycling plant in the desert of Saudi Arabia, a centenary railway on the grasslands of East Africa, replacing one laid by the British a century ago, that will and a skyscraper in Malaysia that will be the highest built by China in a foreign country.

To achieve international goodwill and for propaganda purposes, China attempts to involve other - ple, China is planning to launch far side of the moon. The Chinese are soliciting 20,000 messages that will be sent into space.

internationally has been improving. According to the 2016-2017 Survey, jointly conducted by the Center for International Communication Studies under the China Foreign Languages Publishing Administration and Kantar Millward Brown and Lightspeed, China ranked second to the United States Kingdom.

The survey, which has been conducted annually since 2011, interviewed people in 22 countries. China scored 6.22 out of 10 for its overall image, maintaining a slight upward curve in recent years.

At every opportunity, China pushes the message that while it is on an uptrend, the US is moving