Fat Years - Chan Koonchung [109]
“If we cannot protect our workers,” said He Dongsheng, “and cannot provide universal health insurance and social security, then what kind of a socialist country would we be?” For the first time, Little Xi and Fang Caodi nodded in agreement.
“Not relying excessively on exports doesn’t mean not trading with other countries. China is certainly not closed to foreign contact. It is still in the process of developing its heavy industry, and so it has been necessary to buy entire production lines from developed countries such as Germany, transport them to China, and reassemble them here. Furthermore, the United States also has products that China is still unable to manufacture, like Boeing aircraft and high-tech precision instruments. China will buy as many of these as possible. At present, Europe and America still have to rely on Chinese goods, but as China exports less to these countries, it serves to reduce their trade deficit with China. In general, though, China is already able to manufacture most of the goods it needs. Whether some of these are inferior copies or not, China’s domestic market is big enough and competition will produce articles of acceptable quality at appropriate prices. Then the number of industrial products that developed countries can sell to China will gradually decrease.
“China’s internal market is such a juicy plum that foreign capital, big-name brands, and retail companies have willingly accepted harsh joint-venture conditions for the right to enter or remain in China. China’s strict policies violate the spirit of WTO regulations, but since the protectionist and mercantilist activities of the developed nations themselves brought WTO negotiations to a standstill, the idea of global trade without barriers has turned into a pipe dream, and nobody can any longer occupy the moral high ground and lecture China.
“Our greatest needs are energy, minerals, other raw materials, and food, and most of these come from the countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Now even Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Russia are both buying Chinese goods and supplying China with these essentials. Basically, China can regard them as Third World countries. It has already reached mutually beneficial currency-exchange arrangements with the major trading nations, and the renminbi is now a globally circulating currency on a par with the dollar and the euro. China is already as important an economic entity as the United States, the European Union, and Japan. Its inflation remains at an acceptable rate of seven or eight percent, and economic growth has topped fifteen percent three years running. Such growth was seen before, during the thirty years of Reform and Openness: from 1982 to 1984 China’s GDP rose fifteen percent a year, but the total size of the GDP was small. To put it simply, China is now the only locomotive powering global economic growth. No wonder the nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America want to be close to China, and no wonder people now say that the age of American imperialism is over, and the Chinese century has begun.” He Dongsheng paused to clear his throat.
Lao Chen, Little Xi, and Fang Caodi didn’t understand economics, but they were concerned about China, and knew therefore that they could not ignore the subject. They listened attentively and with narrowed eyes to He Dongsheng’s explanations. What rendered them truly speechless was when He Dongsheng turned from economics to a discussion of the international political situation.
“No matter how badly off the American economy is, the United States is still, militarily, the strongest nation in the world. Only the armed forces of the United States have the power to strike anywhere in the world.” He Dongsheng got back into his stride.
China cannot, therefore, follow the path taken by the Soviet Union during the Cold War: competing for world