As the People’s Republic of China turns 75, a legacy of economic success faces challenges
In the 1990s, at China’s southern port of Xiamen, containers loaded onto ships were declared to customs as holding valuable export goods.
At a time when China was striving to expand global trade in a bid to join the World Trade Organisation (WTO), Beijing provided substantial tax rebates for logistics companies, turning many into millionaires.
But there was a secret: many of the shipping containers were empty.
This fraud in China’s maritime industry saw exporters colluding with customs officials, exploiting state subsidies and pocketing significant sums while creating an exaggerated narrative of the country’s booming exports.
It only came to light in the early 2000s with the exposure of a notorious smuggling case involving businessman Lai Changxing, whose extravagant lifestyle and corruption shocked the Chinese public.
Today, China produces 98 percent of the world’s shipping containers, which have become a symbol of the economic superpower’s rise and fall.
After sending “made in China” products worldwide for nearly four decades, China’s bubble has been popped by the trade war with the United States and party chief Xi Jinping’s crackdowns on key industries such as property and technology.
Those containers that drove China’s economy and global influence are now once again sitting empty, piled up at Chinese ports.
On the People’s Republic of China’s 75th birthday, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is facing its most significant political and economic turmoil since the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.
As one of the longest-surviving authoritarian regimes in modern history, the CCP is grappling with challenges that expose deep vulnerabilities and threaten party chief Xi Jinping’s overarching vision known as “the Chinese dream”.
There is part of me that loves Communist China.
Over the past 40 years, the number of people in China with incomes below $1.90 per day – the International Poverty Line as defined by the World Bank to track global extreme poverty– has fallen by close to 800 million
Lifting 800million out of poverty is an extraordinary achievement, especially when you consider 40% of Americans currently live in poverty.
The Communist Party must be congratulated for such vision and drive of purpose top serve the people and provide them with the infrastructure to propel them into the future as a Super Power.
Their commitment and leadership in green tech is worthy of celebration.
However.
There is also a part of me that despises Communist China.
The corruption, mass surveillance, predatory Chinese business interests, the brutal persecution of the Uyghur’s, their Grey Zone war against the South Pacific, their use of meth to undermine the Pacific, their shadow banking infrastructure that facilitates global criminal cartels, their desire to invade Taiwan, their appalling human rights record and their rapacious exploitation of anything and everything that moves along the Belt and Road Initiative are as repellant as the sins of any great power.
If we are serious about countering Chinese influence in our country, then why aren’t we protecting our Chinese-New Zealand population far more from harassment by the Chinese Communist Party?
‘We don’t feel safe here in New Zealand’: Call for urgent inquiry into foreign interference
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- A pro-democracy group of Chinese New Zealanders is calling for an urgent open inquiry into China’s foreign interference activities in New Zealand and the Pacific.
- The New Zealand Values Alliance says the New Zealand Chinese community do not have the same freedom of speech and association as other Kiwis.
- It says New Zealand needs to face up to the domestic and external security risk, to better protect its own people as well as its national security.
The manner in which the CCP threatens and bullies their diaspora in our country has been well documented by Professor Anne-Marie Brady, if NZ wants to counter negative Chinese influence and wants to strengthen our national security against the CCP, reaching out to our NZ-Chinese community in a meaningful way would do far more to protect us than AUKUS ever will!
The fact we have so many Mandarin only speakers in NZ who are all subject to CCP propaganda through the Mandarin newspapers has always been deeply problematic.
We need culturally appropriate out reach with culturally appropriate Police responses that allow a process to investigate and prosecute foreign harassment by State actors.
Stepping up and protecting our NZ-Chinese community is an obligation as the host country and culture. We would not allow any other Government to persecute their former citizens in our country, we shouldn’t allow the CCP to do it either.
This is NOT China. This is New Zealand and we should not allow our dependence on them to buy our basic milk powder to warp our values.
We need an inquiry into this type of harassment to make it clear we will not tolerate it.
Manaakitanga and Manaaki demands we do no less.
Happy Birthday China.
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Martyn – Shame about the Human Rights violations…but, Happy Birthday China all the same.
Churchill wrote:
“Dictators ride to and fro on tigers from which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.”
and so it is for both Xi Jinping and Putin. These roles don’t offer retirement benefits.
Glad that adopting capitalism lifted 800 million out of poverty. But the free trade types were wrong that it would lift China away from communist government.
China is not communist per se.
Yes, it is run by an entity calling itself the Chinese Communist Party, but their economic structure is a 50:50 mix of state owned enterprises and private business. Without checking, I think they call this “socialism with Chinese characteristics” or similar.
Interestingly, this formula has produced phenomenal growth, way outstripping competing western economies.
Sounds about right other than the fact that the CCP is in fact the CPC – the Communist Party of China. Their ‘spreading the wealth’ form of capitalism (Social capitalism, perhaps), arguably what the West had for a while also, is no longer tolerated by today’s capitalist elites – neoliberalism, aka diverting wealth creation from the many to the fortunate few – is the model they are being ‘nudged’ into adopting. War awaits them if they fail to play Western ball. And given how bloodthirsty my fellow Lefties are turning out to be – this won’t be a war the world wants, let alone China.
Economic measures are almost always a male view of life.
Males relate to numbers, production, profit margins and power.
Men don’t relate so well to people because people are too complicated and slow production.
Even worse social conditions involve women.
Women are thegreatest enemy of production and profit margins.
Machines are simpler and don’t need time off to have children
You can add a heavy dose of nationalism into the Chinese leadership’s policies so that makes it national socialism with Chinese characteristics.
I thought it was closer to that as well. I’d say China was far closer to fascism then communism.
Good point!
If you delete the fig leaf of Maoism all that’s left is Fascism, because that’s pretty much what Fascism is: Totalitarianism combined with mercantile capitalism and unholy alliance between the state and big business.
China is a dead man walking because it has painted itself into a corner from which it cannot extract itself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2G7B3W34P6w
NZ businesses had better find some new markets, fast!
Andrew, China is in our region our trade with them is our largest you pakeha bigots just don’t get it that european exceptionalism is ova get used to it chump!
Communist dictatorship / live organ harvesting / concentration camps / sweat shops / pollution / mass state surveillance – what’s not to like?
I wonder how aligning ourselves with the ‘Land of the free’ will work out? Corporatocracy dictated to by the military industrial complex involved in ‘Nation Building’. First you’ve got to look like your friends before you act like them and we are going down that track right now.
Quite true PR China has increased living standards.
As have South Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan and Japan – All of which have managed to transition to democracy.
Chatting about this with my father-in-law (born 1944 in Shaanxi, now lives in Beijing). He (not me Mark) pointed out that:
People now have to pay for healthcare.
Education is now expensive.
The gap between rich and poor is now enormous.
Corruption is still endemic, despite the purges of Xi Jinping(mainly aimed at eliminating political rivals).
Rising crime, suicide, drug use are indicators of a society that now has in many ways lost purpose.
So – is Chinese society heading in the same direction as ours? Or are we gravitating towards them?
And you believe those ‘out of poverty’ numbers? Probably supplied by those shipping container officials.
The fact that our export markets depend so much on China, including milk powder, wine, meat etc pretty much demonstrates that something is happening, even with zero stats from the Chinese government
The corruption, mass surveillance, … … Every communist government ever, yet this site brims with the hammer and sickle.
The CCP implementation of capitalism has benefited China hugely. The big coastal cities are marvels of modern construction and social sophistication. Extreme poverty has been eradicated although inland many still live in relative poverty.
I have wished for years that Cuba would have followed China and allowed a greater measure of capitalism but Diaz Canal the new President seems more old style communist and is stamping out the green shoots Raul Castro began to foster.
Anyone that quotes Mrs Brady is well off beam–she is the Mike Hosking of China affairs and not credible when you examine the think tanks she is aligned to.
China is part of the BRICS imperialist realignment that is happening between North and South, which is not necessarily geographical. The independent working class internationalist slogan is…“neither Washington, Moscow or Beijing”…but…everyone likes a but…China tends to leave bridges, ports, roads and economic assistance behind when it interacts with nations in the 21st century.
China is huge and imperfect, and incredibly powerful economically and scientifically, but they would not have let a Mango Mussolini near their leadership or to support a “Jan 6” assault.
State Capitalism communist style? NZ could do with a dose of that at the moment with the CoC vandals waging a war on the poor.
If China wants to be a super-superpower, it needs to be like Taiwan, not a dragon hoping to take it over.
Establish the rule of law, and give the Chinese people free rein.
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