Prominent Chinese economists blame ‘China model’ for trade war with the US
DHARAMSALA, Oct 30: Amidst escalating trade war with the US, prominent Chinese economists have blamed ‘China model’ for the trade war that has hampered the growth of the Chinese economy.
“Two prominent Chinese economists have broken with Communist party orthodoxy, arguing that trade war with the US is the result of Beijing’s state-led development model rather than Donald Trump’s attempt to block China’s rise,” the Financial Times reported.
The report further stated that the criticisms highlight the split between the reform and statist-minded camps among Chinese policy intellectuals and bureaucrats, and depict US tariffs as an understandable response to Chinese policies rather than an unprovoked attack on Beijing.
According to the report, Zhang Weiying, a professor at Peking University’s National School of Development has recently said in a speech that China’s economic ascendancies since 1978 are not the result of a distinctive “Chinese model” of development, this incorrect interpretation has contributed to the current trade conflict by provoking alarm among western countries.
“In the eyes of westerners, the so-called ‘China model’ is ‘state capitalism,’ which is incompatible with fair trade and world peace and must not be allowed to be advance triumphantly without impediment,” Zhang Weiying has said.
Likewise, Sheng Hong, the executive director of the Unirule Institute of Economics, a liberal think-tank, has warned that China is at risk of abandoning Deng Xiaoping’s post-1978 “reform and opening up” policy of free markets and open trade, leading to conflict with the west, the report noted.
“China’s reform and opening up is…. the guarantee of strategic cooperation between China and the US. Without a doubt, reform and opening up eliminated the ideological conflict between China and the US, as well as the whole western world, and gradually brought convergence in terms of values,” Mr Sheng has said in a commentary.
As the trade war between Washington and Beijing rams up, Chinese shares ceded their ranking as the second-largest stock market in the world to Japan in August earlier this year, while in July, the Chinese state Media predicted in a rare and candid commentary that Chinese firms will go bankrupt and private companies will be worst-hit by the wrath of the trade war with the US.
