BY: Pooya Mirzaei
PEJOURNAL – “When I was growing up in rural China in the 1970s, cars and trucks were scarce. My friends and I preferred to follow these cars on the dirty rural roads and enjoy the game. Today, however, China has become the largest automaker, with twice the capacity of the United States.” says Victor Gao, a famous Chinese translator.
“I never imagined that one day a Chinese family would own a car,” Gao told CNN. “I never believed that China would one day become the largest automaker in the world.” “It was beyond my dreams to see China one day surpass the United States in car production,” he said.
December 18 marked the 40th anniversary of the beginning of China’s transition from a poor Asian country to a superpower. This great age of change is widely known as “reform and opening up.” China’s domestic product gross was only $ 150 billion when powerful Chinese politician and leader Deng Xiaoping ordered change in 1978. Now, 40 years later, that figure has reached $ 12 trillion, which is behind only the United States in this area.
While 40 years have passed since the Chinese effort, now the war has begun over the future of China’s economic miracle. China has already reached its milestone, and now there are two views in the world economy: one led by Donald Trump, who wants an open economy, and the other is Xi Jinping’s approach, which in his country’s communist system calls for greater control over all social aspects, including the economy.
The era of “reform and opening up” has changed so much that it has been forgotten what happened to this country half a century ago. In 1978, China was plagued by extreme poverty stemming from decades of mismanagement in the economic and political sphere. Hundreds of millions of workers, mainly in rural areas, suffered from malnutrition. The economy was on the verge of absolute bankruptcy.
Today, China owns about 10 percent of the world’s wealth. In the last 20 years alone, the wealth of every adult has quadrupled and only one percent of China’s population lives in absolute poverty. China currently has 600 billionaires, more than anywhere else in the world. Historically, much of China’s existing credentials have come from the country’s great reformer, Deng, following Mao Zedong’s dark and chaotic era. What Deng created was an experimental and unique approach in a communist country whose economy was collapsing, but he revived the economy and liberated some individual freedoms.
China changed step by step. Farmers, for example, were able to sell their surplus produce and make a profit. Entrepreneurs started their own businesses. In some states, special economic zones have been established for free trade. In 1990, China’s stock market, perhaps the most important symbol of the open market, was officially reopened. Gao, who worked as a translator for Deng from 1983 to 1988, describes the former Chinese leader as a pragmatist. “Deng’s basic idea is that you lose the main focus of the debate between socialism and capitalism,” Gao, who now works at the Beijing Center for the Study Institute, told CNN. What matters most is what you do. This is what will bring food to the Chinese table.
Gao recalls that a meeting was held in 1986 between Deng and the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, and the Chinese leader asked him to launch the Chinese stock market. This is despite the fact that such a thing was considered taboo until a few years ago. “I remember that meeting very well,” Gao said. Deng was very humble. “You Americans know very well how to make money, but here in China we are very poor,” he told the New York Stock Exchange.
China is no longer a poor country This country has changed a lot and now there are many issues to celebrate. An exhibition was held in Beijing earlier this year… The exhibition was visited by thousands of people daily. Some of the booths on display featured Chinese electronics and advanced technology, and well-illustrated the passage of time in this communist country. But some visitors noticed a strange thing from the communist country’s propaganda: that the rejection of Xi Jinping was more than Deng in the exhibition, while Deng was always referred to as the leader of the era of reform and opening up and capitalism.
“There are museums across the country that collect Deng images,” said Frank Ching, a professor of technology at Hong Kong University. “While Deng has always been a significant historical figure for the Chinese.”
Praising Xi Jinping is not uncommon in modern China, and he is constantly praised as a powerful leader in the Chinese media. The setback in China today stems from the fact that Xi Jinping does not agree with some of Deng’s liberal economic reforms, and he opposes strengthening the private sector as before. Companies are under pressure to strengthen the role of the Communist Party within their organizations in order to highlight the role of the Communist Party throughout the country. ” Xi Jinping has taken the country far from the era of reform and the opening of the Deng era,” Qing said.
All of this shows that there is a fundamental difference between Deng Xiaoping and Xi Jinping. Deng had left the community more open and freer. There was more room for growth in jobs and free domestic capital. The social, political and cultural atmosphere was more fluid for the Chinese people.
Although the country was based on communist principles, the citizens felt a more liberal feeling in the society.
But under Xi Jinping, the situation changed completely. China’s economy seeks to become a financial and colonial giant around the world from a closed regional system. China is now thinking of controlling all of the Middle East’s energy reserves, from North Africa to Latin America, and capturing the European market and ticketing US industries. Even with the Silk Road project, this can be seen visibly.
On the contrary, the situation is reversed within Chinese society. The ruling Communist Party has overshadowed the entire cultural and social life of the people and suppressed any protest or political movement. A clear example of this is the use of CCTV cameras in all parts of China’s major cities and the recording of the movements of its citizens. The interior has become very one-handed and practically no one can interfere in the governing body of this country. Many experts even believe that China is seeking to rewrite human rights law and international norms in order to extend the Communist Party’s control over the people of the world.
In any case, China is already a real economic power, and for any country that wants to generate income for its own country, a deal with China is inevitable. However, a deal with China led by Xi Jinping could be dangerous, as it slowly became an economic colony for China, which must provide China with its industrial, commercial and even energy and mining infrastructure for relief.