China Confident in its Ability for Earliest Recovery

A report released by the World Economic Forum recently warns of challenging risks to the global economy in 2009. The report, Global Risk 2009, which identifies deteriorating fiscal positions of countries worldwide, predicts that the slowdown in the growth rate of China's economy is one of the biggest risks to global economic recovery.

This assertion has been followed by speculation of a number of world financial institutions and Western media, and some of them queried that Chinese economy would possibly give rise to the emergence of such newly-coined economic terms as the "post-Olympic syndrome" or "financial crisis syndrome". The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) website in a report even said that "the risk of hard landing in China is sharply rising" to create a "global risk".

Then, why these Westerners at first looked up and then looked down upon China's economy? There are roughly five reasons involved in the phenomena:

First, the present stage is the toughest and most difficult period of the global financial crisis in line with the law that guides the ongoing economic crisis. A few pessimistic economists, who are not so acquainted with the real economic situation in China, have readily reached harsh "verdicts" by basing themselves only on some signs of its economic performance from the late 2008.

Second, for a fairly long period of time, some Western nations have got used to benefiting from China's economic development and, when China slows down its economic growth rate, they could not help feeling great panic. Thirdly, at the outbreak of financial crisis, some Western economists intentionally sang praises or overplayed China in a hope that it would help more to rescue Western economies as they saw China suffer less from the crisis than Western nations; when they turned disappointed with the failure of some of their unrealistic wishes, they would naturally shift to belittle China.

Fourth, Western economists are accustomed to applying to China thorny issues currently prevalent in their countries and make inferences accordingly. Fifth, those with ulterior motives cannot be ruled out to availing themselves of this opportunity to create panic feelings among people and force down the prices of China's property.

Economists often habitually make their forecasts out of their personal career needs. As a matter of fact, people in China do not care for or mind much varied economic forecasts. At the present critical moment, the thing of prime importance is whether or not we are able to acquire an objective, sober-minded recognition of our own national economic strength and go on carrying forward the creative power we have relied on.

People should acknowledge that China currently has four great "assets"as vital, useful tools to cope with the global financial crisis. The first and foremost is the present stage of development China is now in. As ours is a developing nation, its current stage of economic growth is entirely different with that of Western countries, and China is now at an ascending stage on a whole.

The second asset is China's ample economic strength that have accumulated during the past three decades of reform and opening-up. At present, China has about 1.9 trillion US dollars in foreign exchange reserves with a balanced government budget, according to the United Nations' World Economic Situation and Prospects 2009. So, the country has an adequate room for the new policy constellation needed for domestic demand-led growth.

Third is its huge market with reserved rich human resources, and this is where the national power rests with to translate crisis into opportunities. Fourth is a path of economic growth that China has trailed for the integration of its market economy and macro-government economic regulation. On the topic concerning the path of China's economic growth, Justin Yifu Lin, the World Bank's deputy governor and new chief economic economist, said that those economists, who have a blind faith in dogma or punctilious adherence to the written rules of the Western world, or those even wearing the "colored spectacles", do not quite understand what guides the operation of Chinese economy.

Those people genuinely caring for China should see that plans set forth by the Chinese government to stimulate economic growth on a big scale have yielded substantial outcome. These plans have plucked up the confidence of Chinese firms or enterprises and people alike and brought hopes to global economic recovery. Moreover, China has blazed a correct path, and a variety of policy measures taken by its government are worthy for quite a few countries to draw references from.

As a gigantic, immense economic entity with a total population of 1.3 billion and a great developing nation with three full decades of reform and opening-up, China will not be led by the nose or led astray by Western economists with their forecasts, and the Chinese people are fully confident in their ability to recover the crisis at the earliest opportunity.

By People's Daily Online, and its author is PD reporter Zhong Sheng