What's behind China's economic success in 2020
China has become the only major economy in the world to withstand a series of unprecedented challenges in 2020 -- from the pandemic to the US trade war -- and at the same time record GDP growth. However, China not only came out with honors from all these trials, but also announced another very important achievement -- the victory over poverty by the end of 2020. These facts were presented by Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, delivered with the Government Work Report at the opening of the annual session of the National People's Congress, China's top legislature, in Beijing.
It's time to ask the question - how did the Chinese economy manage to achieve such indicators and what's this secret of this success?
If the world economy in recent years has already shown low growth, then the 2020 pandemic and the subsequent planetary stagnation of the economies of individual countries have finally collapsed these indicators. In this sense, the results that the Chinese economy has managed to achieve can really be called amazing and effective.
The global pandemic has become for China, perhaps, a more difficult test than for all other countries of the world. After all, China was the first to face this threat and initiated the organization of a whole system of global measures. In particular, in order to take control of the spread of the coronavirus in China, the country decided to introduce strict quarantine measures and reduce industrial production. All these measures brought significant losses to the Chinese economy, and resulted in pessimistic opinions from experts, who predicted a global economic recession in China by the end of 2020.
However, contrary to expectations, this did not happen. By the end of the first half of 2020, China began to rapidly accelerate its economic growth. How did it happen? Successful control over the pandemic was achieved due to the fact that the Chinese authorities implemented a consistent policy, creating tight control zones in places where there were coronavirus infections. The “closed cities” strategy has fully justified itself, and by the end of the first half of 2020, China managed to fully control the pandemic, restart industrial production and other sectors of the economy, and also fulfill its plans.
However, perhaps China's most important achievement has been its victory over poverty amid the pandemic and continued US pressure on China. The Chinese authorities were able to defeat poverty as planned - by the end of 2020. The well-being of all Chinese people was achieved thanks to the fact that Beijing actively invested in the development of the poorest regions of the country, consistently improving the infrastructure of these regions and taking into account the income of each Chinese person. Anyone whose income was less than 1 dollar a day was involved in social programs and payment of benefits by Chinese authorities. Targeted aid has helped to significantly increase the income of the Chinese and at the same time make the economy stronger, since in recent years, the Chinese economy has become much larger than before, depending on the level of consumption of goods of the average Chinese in the domestic market. Thus, by increasing the income of the Chinese, the country's economy became even stronger and more resilient to unexpected challenges.
The Chinese economy is showing more than confident results of successful growth, despite external challenges. And it did an excellent job with all the aforementioned crises. It should be noted, however, that China also demonstrates amazing dedication and humanity. Recall that against the backdrop of an exacerbation of the pandemic in the world, China began to assist European countries with the supply of anti-pandemic materials and equipment, and at some point Serbia, Italy and other European countries seriously relied on Beijing's supplies of medical masks and ventilators, without waiting for them from EU member states. And at the time of the most severe economic crisis amid the pandemic, China began to write off debts to poor and underdeveloped countries in Africa.
Proceeding from this, Europe and the United States, should take into account one important and simple truth. One should not try, fearing some very far-fetched Chinese threat, to "drown" China in a swamp of problems and sanctions. On the contrary, one should aim to reach a new level of friendship and cooperation with Beijing, as the fruits of such actions will undoubtedly be greater. As time has shown, China, unlike many countries, was able to curb the global challenges faced by all of humanity - a pandemic and a global crisis. Fighting these two challenges at the same time, China never thought about temporarily suspending poverty eradication programs. On the contrary, it achieved its goal on schedule, which was not expected in the West.
Meanwhile, China's plans for the near future are concrete and at the same time impressive in their scope and prospects. China's 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) provides for the development of the Chinese economy and society in a variety of areas - from reducing unemployment to carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP, as well as increasing life expectancy and full basic old-age insurance. For example, only for 2021, China set a goal for itself to solve large-scale tasks. Here are just a few of them: achieve GDP growth above 6 percent and create more than 11 million new jobs, maintain the CPI at 3 percent in 2021, and expand efficient investment with a central investment budget of 610 billion yuan (about $ 94 billion).
And although some of the goals of the five-year plan now even sound fantastic, given the results already achieved by 2020, you understand that nothing is impossible in principle for China. Everything will be consistently implemented - China always achieves the set benchmarks, and with the help of its colossal, inexhaustible economic potential, wise and far-sighted development strategy, it is able to solve the most incredible tasks of the near and promising future.
Seymur Mammadov is the director of the international expert club EurAsiaAz and editor-in-chief of Azerbaijan's news agency Vzglyad.az.
The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of China Daily and China Daily website.
