5. How China’s views on globalization are different from those of the West?

Can the
Chinese experience in rapid economic growth act as model for other developing countries?

China portrays itself as a Third World country that pursues "an independent foreign policy of
peace." Third World means that China is a poor, developing country and not part of any power
bloc such as that around the United States or the socialist bloc formerly associated with the
Soviet Union. "Independence" means that China does not align itself with any other major
power. Chinese spokesmen say that their country seeks peace so that it can concentrate on
development.

China says its decisions on foreign policy questions derive from the Five Principles of
Peaceful Coexistence: mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-
aggression, non-interference in each other's internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and
peaceful coexistence. The Chinese leadership originally enumerated these principles in 1954
when China, with a communist government, was trying to reach out to the non-communist
countries of Asia. Today, the Five Principles still serve a useful purpose. They offer an
alternative to the American conception of a new kind of world order — one in which
international regimes and institutions, often reflecting U.S. interests and values, limit the rights
of sovereign states to develop and sell weapons of mass destruction, repress opposition and
violate human rights, pursue mercantilist economic policies that interfere with free trade, and
damage the environment. China's alternative design for the world stresses the equal,
uninfringeable sovereignty of all states large and small, Western and non-Western, rich and poor,
democratic and authoritarian, each to run its own system as it sees fit, whether its methods suit
Western standards or not. Another Chinese term for such a system is "multipolarity." The Five
Principles explain why America should not be able to impose its values on weaker nations. Thus
the core idea behind the Five Principles as interpreted by China today is sovereignty – that one
state has no right to interfere in the internal affairs of another state. (Andrew J. Nathan and
Robert S. Ross, The Great Wall and the Empty Fortress: China’s Search for Security , 1997)
One Belt One Road The Silk Road Economic Belt, first announced by Chinese President Xi
Jinping during his September 2013 trip to Kazakhstan, envisions a network of roads and
railways, together with a parallel network of pipelines, fiber-optic cables, and telecommunication
links, connecting China to Europe via Central Asia, Iran, Turkey, the Balkans, and the Caucasus
across the 11,000-kilometer-long Eurasian continent.
China believes that internal diversity in things such as culture, religion, political systems and so
on should be respected, but countries can still work together in pursuing peace and development.
Once these two objectives are in place, other good things will follow, such as state capacity and
quality institutions. China’s gradual and incremental transition away from a Soviet-style
command economy to a more market-based economy shows that while any nation may not start
out with a complete set of the right institutions, they will appear once the developmental process
begins to pick up speed. Many of the initiatives in foreign affairs and international collaboration
that China has rolled out in recent years reflect such a perspective. While contributing to the
making and building of peace in various parts of the world, the central leadership is clearly
hoping to promote bilateral, regional and global collaboration in trade, infrastructure,
industrialisation, finance and investment, as well as developmental know-how and policymaking.
The Belt and Road Initiative is a prime example. Clearly, these are interesting times and two
paths now lie before us. One will take the world back to the 1930s, to an era when protectionism
prevailed and wars followed. The other path will usher us into a globalised and interdependent
world. (South China Morning Post)
China’s Economic Growth China is the best-developed socialist country in the world. In the
international context of the Soviet Union’s disintegration and the drastic changes in Eastern
Europe in the early 1990s, China continued to adhere to “one center and two basic points” and
continued to improve the socialist basic economic system, mechanism and institutions by
continuously pushing forward the reform of the socialist market economic system. This was to
maintain the vitality of Marxism and the socialist system, contributing huge institutional
dividends to economic and social development. This means that China has not followed the
“Washington Consensus,” but the “Beijing Consensus.” It has not followed neo-liberalism or
western mainstream economics but the guidelines of socialist theories with Chinese
characteristics and has come up with a development path utterly different from those of the
western capitalist countries. China has created a “Chinese miracle” in the history of world
economic development. Through more than 30 years of rapid growth, China has become the
world’s second largest economy, the largest manufacturing country and the largest trading
country, making more than 700m people out of poverty to enjoy a better quality of life. The birth
and development of economics are all derived from successful practices. In fact, in the successful
practical experience of economic development since the reform and opening up, China has
already formed some socialist economic theories with Chinese characteristics, including: the
theory of the primary stage of socialism, the underlying economic system theory together with
the basic distribution theory in the primary stage of socialism, the theory of taking economic
development as the center, the theory of the socialist market economy and the theory of opening
up to the outside. Unique Chinese theory, Chinese path, Chinese system and Chinese culture
have all been formed, and even the “China model” has been proposed to the world. The great
success of Chinese economic development has boosted confidence in the Chinese theory, path,
system and culture. (Emerald Insight)

Paradoxically, originally prompted by President Trump’s dissatisfaction with the U.S.'s $540
billion annual exports to China in 2018, relative to China’s $120 billion in exports to the U.S.,
the trade war has expanded to address a range of issues from IP theft to state subsidies. Xi likely
doesn’t mind buying more soybeans or whether canoe paddles are taxed at 12.5% or 25%;
China’s soul searching is around whether U.S. demands around state subsidies and IP transfers
are at fundamental odds with how its socialist model works. The China model no longer works,
even in China. The long-term negative effect on the economy will likely be severe.
Having said that, the limitations of the Asian miracle model do not validate Western claims that
Washington- or Westminster-style democracy will prove optimal everywhere. The contrast
between the Asian miracle economies’ successes in improving the lives of the most deprived
sectors of the population, and the failure of the Western democratic model to do so in countries
like India and the Philippines can indeed inspire developing countries to seek alternative paths to
growth. Xi Jinping’s careful insistence that all countries should be allowed to choose their own
path attracts an enthusiastic audience.