European Union must learn to appreciate the ‘Chinese model’, author of new report says. The “successful Chinese model” is increasingly being copied by other countries, an expert on EU foreign policy says.
Stephan Keukeleire says this seems to be a “more attractive mode” for developing and emerging countries than what is promoted by Europe.
Keukeleire and Tom Delreux, both professors at the University of Leuven in Belgium, have just published an updated version of their analysis of EU foreign policy.
“We are more positive about China this time, and it has good reason to take the positions it does. The important thing is to avoid seeing things as black and white, as some commentators do.”
While Brussels has accused China of not respecting human rights, Keukeleire says, Beijing can point to double standards by the EU, particularly its lack of attention to “collective” human rights. These include the right to subsistence and the right to development, he says.
If the “important principle” of the right to subsistence is defined as having the minimum necessary to support life, China’s leaders deserve praise, he says.
“In a relatively short period of time it has ensured that large parts of China’s population has been hauled out of poverty.”
An estimated 200 million Chinese may still live below the poverty line, but government efforts to tackle the problem “is something Western diplomats would do well to understand better”. Europeans “often ignore or even do not know about concepts that are important to China”, they say.
Keukeleire says one of the biggest challenges facing China in the near future, apart from trying to guarantee internal stability, will be dealing with rising inequality between the fast-rising ranks of the rich and those at the other end of the economic scale.
“Inequality is one of the reasons why Europe strives for a ‘socially correct market economy’ and it will be fascinating to see the extent to which China can achieve this and create stability. This, in fact, is something we in Europe might also learn from China.”
China now enjoys the highest economic growth of all major and emerging world economies and is the world’s biggest foreign currency reserve country, he says. Taken together, he says, these point to the “impressive leverage” China possesses, economically and, potentially, politically.
Source: China Daily
Comments:
An European expert Stephan Keukeleire asserts that the Chinese economic model is a “more attractive mode” for developing and emerging countries than what is promoted by Europe. Together with that, many Western politicians (especially American) continue to criticize China for its ”non-market” monetary policy (read “China& U.S. to Discuss Yuan, Monetary Policy This Week”).However thanks to the fact that Chinese Government has been allocating targeted loans to the strategic sectors of the economy, China was able to create its own national industry and bring their people out of poverty. If the Chinese Central Bank led the same policy as the one held by the Federal Reserve, the Chinese commercial banks would have invested money in the bond and stock market bubbles rather than in the national manufacturers.