China maintains its world's top twenty economic growth rate in 2013, with a real GDP growth rate of 7.4%. According to statistics released in October, China still has the fastest-growing big economy, with a 7.3% expansion in the third quarter from a year earlier, but this is actually its slowest pace in more than five years. Chinese economy is almost certain this year to register its weakest annual growth rate since 1990. (Data from World Bank)
Is China making history, soaring at a speed that ? Certainly yes. China receives continual coverage in the popular press of its emerging superpower status, and has been identified as a rising economic growth and military superpower by academics and experts. Many critics hold positive view toward the rising of China. Lawrence Saez at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, argued in 2011 that the United States will be surpassed by China as military superpower within twenty years. The Director of the China Center for Economic Reform at Peking University, Yao Yang stated that China will become the world's largest economy by 2021. (When will China become a global superpower?, Thair Shaikh)
Meanwhile, however, the doubt about the potential of China has never end. As the ironic nick name "Word Factory" implies, 83% of all high-tech products that are made in China were produced for the foreign companies. China's problems regarding wages, aging, declining population, and also gender imbalance may lead to crimes. (I don't see China becoming a superpower in this century, Timothy Beardson) However, the biggest obstacle preventing China from being regarded as superpower is its unsustainable development, the risk in managing its economic mode, population, and resources.
Is China making future, making the status quo sustainable? My answer is no.
China’s success story is based on a single economic mode: mass production of low-value manufacturing products using abundant and cheap labor, and endless economies of scale. This mode of growth is proved to be losing its efficacy. The country’s changing demographics, aging population and rising wage costs make this system increasingly unsustainable. Most importantly, lacking technological originality and innovation, China owns very few patents featuring originality and high or core technology. Fewer than 1,000 Chinese patents have won recognition from counterparts in the U.S., Europe, or Japan (High quantity, low quality: China's patent boom, Xinhua), which is why the claim of China being able to keep its high rate of economic grow without being outsourced by western countries is highly questionable .
Overcrowding has long been a problem the country faces, especially in those most advanced cities - can you believe that the city of Beijing is accommodating more people than New York State? (2014 revision of the World Urbanization Prospects, United Nations) Various regulation has been implemented regarding population, including the One-child Policy and Hukou System, and then comes the side effects. The former leads to aging and gender imbalance problem, with a 6:5 ratio which means that 1 in 6 males will not have a female partner. The latter increase inequality - denying rural citizens' access to many urban social services by providing services only accessible to those with permanent urban residency status. (Non-residents face hard and costly road to get around the Hukou barrier, Zhang Hong) Moreover, even though higher education in China is continuously growing, changing and developing, it is true that there are merely over 2,000 universities and colleges, with more than 6 million enrollments in total. Comparing to US's over 4500 degree-granting institutions serving more than 21 million youth (Enrollment - National Center for Education Statistics), China still has a long way to go in order to better the "quality" of its people.
Mass production also brings the problem of over-consuming natural resources and pollution. As a result of lacking technological support, China’s cement factories use 45% more power than the world average, and its steel makers use about 20% more. (As China Roars, Pollution Reaches Deadly Extremes, Joseph Kahn and Jim Yardley) It is in fact almost impossible to see a clear blue sky in busy cities like Beijing and Shanghai, which is why several weeks ago Beijing had to shut down all factories, stop all transportation and dismiss all students and workers for a week as a deus ex machina to show members of APEC a blue sky. According to the Chinese Ministry of Health, ambient air pollution alone killed hundreds of thousands of citizens every year. Only 1% of the country’s 560 million city dwellers breathe air considered safe by the European Union, because all of its major cities are constantly covered in a "toxic gray shroud". And these are just a glimpse of industrial pollution. Soil contamination and water pollution left permanent effect on agriculture and water supply; 300 million tonnes of waste was generated in 2012 because of the small level of "environmental awareness" (Data from Waste Atlas).
"What would you think of some one who steals from his or her grandchildren?" asked Prof. Woodhouse in the Future of Technological Civilization. Are China supposed to make history at the expense of the well-being of the descendants? Or should the country be responsible for the future of itself and its future generation? I believe that there is no ideal "sustainable development" and that there is always a trade-off between making history and making future, among which I incline to the latter.
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