Fear or Anticipation: How Should We FEEL Abut China's Economic Growth?

Filed in archive News on August 8, 2008

In a recent commentary piece in The Independent, Stuart Simpson asks this question: Should we not celebrate China's continued rapid growth - after all not only will this mean many Chinese people will attain lifestyles their parents could only dream of, but it could also unleash an inventive power to change all our lives?

Simpson is the convenor of the Emerging Economies' Forum at the Institute of Ideas in London. In the piece Simpson considers on the G7, which according to a recent Goldman Sachs report will have a very different look by 2050. France, Germany, Italy, and the UK will have been replaced in the body by larger, currently emerging economies. And the largest economy in the world will belong to China, not America.

Simpson's points seem obvious to me. China has enough problems without confronting Western fear as another obstacle to development. The West benefits from China's growth - and will continue to benefit from it. The idea that China will one day (perhaps soon) become the world's largest economy scares many in the West. Simpson says this:

There is much hype and hysteria about this fact. But we need calm heads to see what is really exciting about China's economic miracle.

The truth is that a huge, impoverished section of the world is moving into the present. That can't be all that bad. It might even be good...


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