China is the world’s largest manufacturing economy. Yes, there are many heartbreaking stories of personal sacrifice in families all over China as rural villagers went to work in cities, where they could earn more money. Children and the elderly were left behind, and the workers themselves had to cope with harsh working conditions away from home.
Over time, employers had to provide better wages and working conditions. China’s policy was not to keep labor costs down but to increase productivity and for workers to earn more. The aim was to become a more-sophisticated, higher-wage economy. China’s competitiveness is not based on remaining low wage, which is a lesson for developing economies.
While migrant workers sent money home to care for their families, the government provided basic infrastructure and services all over the country, including schooling for children. The country’s 97 percent literacy rate is another significant achievement for a country with a large population.
China’s tertiary education system is also important. Besides famous universities, such as Tsinghua University, Peking University and Fudan University, are a large range of language, technical, vocational, computer science, design and art schools that help to fuel China’s capabilities in many sectors.
The Chinese are almost all digitally enabled since there are over 1.5 billion mobile phone subscriptions in the country. Indeed, China is already more advanced than many developed economies in its digital capabilities. Unsurprisingly, education plus an internet connection help to unleash the people’s enterprising spirit. Eighty-four percent of Chinese companies are private businesses.
Just think how many “systems” had to be developed in a fairly short time to cope with 40 years of rapid growth. Standards, laws, regulations, guidelines, management methods and operational practices for all sorts of new products and services had to be created. What started off as suboptimal gradually improved — and more will come.
China is one giant, fast-learning-and-changing entity. By 2035, China aims to achieve “socialist modernization”. What does this mean? The Chinese system overall will be quite well-developed, GDP on a per capita basis will be higher, and day-to-day living for the Chinese people will see further improvements, such as in the quality of free basic healthcare under the country’s social insurance system.
A major problem is the environment. Rapid industrialization and urbanization created pollution and land degradation on a horrendous scale. Leaders acknowledged the damage and after some years of laying down the foundation, the Communist Party of China amended its constitution in 2012 to introduce the concept of “ecological progress” as a part of China’s development. This led to a bevy of new laws and regulations to clean up the environment, and in 2018, China also embedded the concept into the nation’s Constitution as a core mandate.
China is seeing positive results in air quality and water quality already, although cleaning up soil pollution will take more time. The China example in fighting pollution is another valuable experience for other economies.
A revolutionary pathway has now been set. The CPC has a date with destiny to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. This means China will transform its industries through switching away from fossil fuels to using clean energy, and at the same time making everything much more resource efficient.
In parallel, China is deepening ecological and biodiversity restoration. There has been a range of successes that provided knowledge and experience. Impressive projects include the decades-long restoration of the famous Loess Plateau, the Great Green Wall reforestation project that spans half of North China, and the similar River Shelter Forest in the south. There are many more plans in the coming decade.
All in all, the Chinese experience has much to offer the world on development. China’s successes provide valuable case studies for others. There is a range of South-South dialogue and diplomacy that doesn’t get covered in Western media, presumably because those stories are considered not of interest to audiences in wealthy countries.
They also don’t fit the current effort to frame the CPC and China in a negative light — so, while abject poverty may be gone, but many Chinese are still poor; Chinese industries have modernized but there are still many outdated practices; Chinese students score well but they are supposedly less creative; Chinese systems are improving but they are not up to Western standards; and China’s environment is improving but pollution levels are still high.
One set of criticism has to do with while the Chinese may be making improvements at home they damage the environment elsewhere. China’s narrative of “building a community of a shared future for mankind”, which includes sharing China’s development experience, should include efforts to help clean up the global environment and rein in any bad practices by Chinese entities, since China now has a large footprint overseas through its investments and cooperation projects, such as the Belt and Road Initiative, and the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank.
China can’t expect praise and should not seek it. The results speak for themselves but it can be more skillful in putting out its stories and narratives externally. It must not sound like the bleat of a victim. It can also do without an ultranationalist tone since the China story can be a universal story of great receptivity to a diverse international audience.
The author is a former under-secretary for the environment and a legislative councilor in Hong Kong, who is also chief development strategist at the Institute for the Environment at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.