Altered status, politically motivated drag

The US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations approved the Ending China's Developing Nation Status Act last week asking the Joe Biden administration to end the treatment of China as a developing nation.

In fact, the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the OECD all have their own definitions of developed and developing countries. The main indicators are per capita GDP, the Human Development Index and so on.

The HDI, first proposed by the United Nations Development Programme in the 1990 Human Development Report, is a comprehensive index based on three basic variables: life expectancy, education level and quality of life. According to the 2019 Human Development Report, Norway ranked first in the world, while the Chinese mainland ranked 85th. And China's per capita GDP was about $12,700 last year, ranking about 70th in the world.

There is no doubt that China remains a developing country, albeit a big one, and it will remain so for some time to come. The US is not labeling China a "developed country" out of appreciation for or recognition of China's development success.

The real motive behind it ending China's developing country status is to hold back China's development. But China's status is not something that can easily be wiped away by a US Congressional bill.

As Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said, rather than try to figure out how to pin the label of "developed country" on China, the US might want to think about how to remove its own label of a bully and hegemon.

According to some US lawmakers, they are concerned that China is using its developing country status to evade international responsibilities. Those concerns are completely unnecessary. China's contribution to global economic growth and the UN regular budget and peacekeeping assessments far outweighs that of most developed countries.