Text: Yan Ansheng
Chinese average GDP has grown from less than $200 at the beginning of reform and opening up to more than $12,000 today, and China's economy has not only successfully overcome the middle-income trap, but is also entering the ranks of high-income countries; China's total economic output has also jumped from 11th in the world at the beginning of reform and opening up to the world's second largest economy today. These are all visible data changes, however, what is not known is that China's economy is undergoing a great transformation from quantitative to qualitative change, which is marked by the following:
First, China's economy has an unprecedented ability to resist blows and risks. Especially since 2018, the Western country camp led by the United States has carried out all-round suppression and encirclement and interception of China, launched a series of trade wars, science and technology wars, and financial wars, five years have passed, and facts have proved that the containment and suppression of China by the United States and its allies has been declared a complete failure; Especially since 2020, the new crown epidemic has hit China, and China's economy has been greatly dragged down and affected. Nevertheless, compared to other countries and regions in the world, China was the first country to emerge from the epidemic, and it is also one of the very few countries that have been able to maintain positive economic growth during the epidemic. After these two tests, China's economy has shown strong resilience and ability, which shows that the overall quality and ability of China's economy have reached an extremely high level.
Second, China's economy has strong innovation and creativity capabilities, and China's internal circulation has entered a new realm. According to professional statistics, in the past four years, China has overcome more than half of the neck technology and engineering problems, and is accelerating the remaining neck problems. This shows that China's innovation and entrepreneurship capabilities are not what they used to be, even if the powerful United States and even the entire Western developed camp work together to contain China, stuck China's economic and technological neck, but they are all cracked by China. At present, China has ranked among the world's advanced in many industrial fields and stands at the forefront of global industrial development. Looking back, for a long time since the reform and opening up, China's economy mainly relied on foreign demand, China's economic dependence on foreign countries was as high as 70%, when the United States and its Western allies had a decisive impact on China's economy, however, time has changed, today, the main driving force of China's economic growth comes from the domestic demand market, the data shows that the domestic market contributes nearly seventy percent to China's economic growth, and the dependence of China's economy on the international market has been reduced to less than thirty percent. This change reflects that China's economy has been able to achieve independent development through endogenous power, completely getting rid of its dependence on the external market, indicating that China's economic development has entered a new realm of independent development.
China's internal circulation has entered a whole new realm.
Third, China has formed its own unique industrial advantages, has caught up with or is approaching the world's advanced level in major high-end manufacturing fields, and has achieved curve overtaking in emerging industries. Once upon a time, China has always been at the low end of the global industrial supply chain, mainly relying on labor to roughly process some "three to one supplement" low-value-added labor-intensive products, so there will be a tragic story of exchanging hundreds of millions of shirts for a Boeing aircraft. Today, China leads the world in 5G communications, UHV power transmission, high-speed rail, shipbuilding, satellite navigation, space technology, new energy vehicles, photovoltaics, hydropower and other fields. Nowadays, China has not only become the world's largest manufacturing country, but also more and more obvious industrial advantages, even in the backward chip manufacturing, health care, high-end precision machine tools, large aircraft manufacturing and other fields, China is also trying to catch up, it will not take too long, China will catch up. China is fully implementing a high-quality development strategy, which will not only greatly enhance China's innovation and creativity capabilities and push China's economy to a new level, but also completely bridge the industrial gap between China and the entire Western camp led by the United States, and lay a more solid foundation and platform for China's economic development.
Fourth, China's manufacturing has strong international competitiveness, China's export structure has undergone substantial changes, high value-added mechanical and electrical products export accounted for nearly seventy percent, China has become the world's first trading power. In the past ten years, with the transformation and upgrading of China's economy, China's foreign trade has also undergone historic changes, on the one hand, China's foreign trade scale has continued to expand, not only with the reduction of China's economic dependence on foreign countries and decreased, but all the way forward, firmly occupying the position of the world's largest goods trading country. At present, China is the largest trading partner of more than 130 countries in the world, and China's contribution to global trade growth continues unabated; On the other hand, China's import and export structure has undergone a historic transformation, from mainly exporting raw materials, labor-intensive products and low value-added products to mainly exporting technology-intensive products, high value-added mechanical and electrical products, and service products. Imported products have changed from mainly manufactured products to raw materials and agricultural and sideline products. Although the dependence of China's economy on foreign countries is decreasing, more and more countries and regions are increasingly dependent on China, and now products made in China are of high quality and high cost performance, becoming the only choice for more and more countries and regions. It can be expected that with the continuous enhancement of China's innovation and entrepreneurship capabilities, as well as breakthroughs in more and more industries and technologies, Made in China will bring more surprises to the world.
The endogenous driving force of China's economy is increasing
In the past ten years, China's economic growth performance has been attracting global attention, and with the fluctuation of China's economic growth, Western countries have successively appeared the "China threat theory" and "China collapse theory". However, the actual situation of China's economic growth has never been as Western media and politicians wished, but it has moved steadily in the midst of fluctuations, and has truly achieved stability and long-term development. In the three years of the epidemic, although China's economy has also suffered a serious impact, China is the first country in the world to get rid of the impact of the epidemic. At present, China's economy is once again facing a new environment and new situation, and international public opinion has once again made various speculations about China's economic prospects.
In May this year, China's export growth turned from positive to negative year-on-year, and the downward pressure on foreign demand appeared, and in June, the downward momentum of foreign trade was still not effectively contained. In the context of shrinking external market demand, China's economic growth is bound to be dragged down to a certain extent. However, the latest 2023 first-half report shows that China's economic growth has not slowed down due to the decline in exports, on the contrary, there was a 6.3% economic growth in the second quarter of this year, much faster than the 4.5% growth rate in the first quarter, and the Chinese economy grew by 5.5% year-on-year in the entire first half of the year. This growth figure is not only unmatched by European and American countries, but also can be proud of any country in the world.
So why has China's economy been able to maintain strong growth despite declining exports? The fundamental reason is that China's economy has formed a strong endogenous driving force, mainly manifested in, on the one hand, domestic consumer demand has become the main driving force for economic growth, at the same time, industrial upgrading in the field of production and manufacturing has driven waves of investment boom, new energy, new technologies, new industries continue to create new domestic demand markets, thereby injecting a steady stream of surging power into production and consumption and even the entire national economy. Therefore, although China's exports have shown a downward trend since May, China's domestic demand market is full of vitality, and industrial upgrading has driven a large amount of capital into new investment areas, so that investment, the carriage that drives economic growth, still maintains a strong driving force, thus completely offsetting the impact of the decline in exports on overall economic growth. Today, the impact of exports and international markets on China's economy has been reduced to secondary factors, and its role and influence continue to decline.
China's economy has formed a strong endogenous driving force.
Analyzing the relevant data in the first half of this year, domestic consumption increased by 8.2% year-on-year, and investment increased by 3.8%. Among them, consumption data contributed 77.2% to China's economic growth, 44 percentage points higher than last year. It can be seen that strong domestic consumption has played a key role in China's economic growth. At the same time, from the perspective of production, in the first half of the year, the added value of the equipment manufacturing industry increased by 6.5%, 2.7 percentage points faster than all industries above designated size; investment in high-tech industries increased by 12.5%; The production index of information transmission, software and information technology services increased by 15.4%; The output of new energy products such as new energy vehicles, solar cells and charging piles increased by 35%, 54.5% and 53.1% respectively, and the export of "new three" products represented by lithium batteries, solar cells and electric manned vehicles increased by 61.6%. Various indicators show that the high-quality development of China's economy and the industrial transformation and upgrading shown are becoming new growth points driving the economy.
In the first half of this year, China's economy still performed so well against the background of declining exports, which indicates that the endogenous driving force of China's economy has played a leading role, and also fully reflects the great success of the dual circulation strategy implemented by the state since 2020.
China has made significant progress in the high-end of its industry
After more than 20 years of hard work, the C919 large aircraft, which represents the highest manufacturing level in the world today, finally soared into the sky in May this year, not only fulfilling the dream of a Chinese century-old large aircraft, but also completely breaking the monopoly situation that has been dominated by Boeing of the United States and Airbus in the world large aircraft market. It is reported that the current orders for C919 have exceeded 1,000 aircraft, and as the superior performance of C919 is recognized by more and more countries, orders for C919 will increase significantly! In particular, it should be emphasized that due to the large number of large aircraft parts and supporting enterprises, C919 will inevitably drive China to continue to scale, step up and level in the field of aircraft manufacturing, and eventually form a three-pronged situation with Boeing in the United States and Airbus in Europe! China's ability to share a share with Europe and the United States in the field of large aircraft manufacturing is the first important milestone in the comprehensive transformation and upgrading of China's manufacturing and its high-end.
While China's large aircraft manufacturing has made breakthroughs, China's shipbuilding industry has also shown a gratifying scene of full bloom. On June 6 this year, China's first world-class domestic giant luxury cruise ship "AIDA. The launch of the 323-meter-long, 37-meter-wide, standard displacement of more than 130,000 tons and 2,125 passenger compartments of the Modu is not only a testament to China's ambition as an emerging shipbuilding power to attack new areas, but also marks China's emergence as a unique shipbuilding power in the world today.
China's first world-class domestic giant luxury cruise ship "AIDA. Modu"
Why has China's shipbuilding industry been able to grow by leaps and bounds in recent years? Claim the status of the global shipbuilding center? The fundamental reason is that China's shipbuilding industry technology level and capabilities have made a qualitative leap, China can not only produce the world's largest container ships and top LNG carriers, but also can produce super luxury cruise ships and aircraft carriers, it can be said that the largest, most difficult, most luxurious and most complex ships in the world today can be produced in China, and the manufacturing level is world-class. This is the fundamental reason why merchants around the world give ship orders to Chinese shipbuilders. Shipbuilding is not only a technology-intensive, capital-intensive high-end manufacturing field, but also a super-large industrial field, like large aircraft manufacturing, an industrial field with a trillion-dollar market. China's ability to seize the central position of shipbuilding manufacturing from Japan and South Korea is another milestone symbol of China's comprehensive transformation and upgrading of industries and moving towards high-end.
What is even more shocking to the world is that the European, American and Japanese auto industries, which have always been considered unsurpassable, are welcoming a strong competitor, that is, Chinese automakers. For a long time, China's automobile manufacturing gives the impression of small scale, poor quality, low level, weak competitiveness, and China's private automobile from the beginning to the rise of less than 30 years, but it is in the development of China's private automobile manufacturing industry, in just 30 years, China's automobile manufacturing industry has achieved historic transformation, now China's automobile manufacturing industry not only in the traditional fuel vehicle field continues to encroach on the European, American and Japanese automobile market, but also in the new energy vehicle track, Chinese cars are far ahead of Europe, the United States, Day car.
The huge changes in China's auto industry have dazzled European and American businesses, and European, American and Japanese automakers who have not regarded Chinese cars as competitors in the past have to look at their Chinese auto counterparts with their Chinese auto counterparts. In the first half of this year, China's automobile export scale has exceeded 2 million units, exceeded the export mark of 4 million units throughout the year, and surpassed Japan to become the world's largest export automobile country. According to the latest news released by the China Automobile Passenger Association, in the past June, the market sales of China's own brand cars increased almost across the board, with growth ranging from more than ten percent to doubling; The sales volume of foreign brands fell sharply, ranging from 20% to 50%. Due to the comprehensive rise of China's automobile industry, the world's automobile manufacturing and market structure are undergoing profound changes.
The fundamental reason why China's own brand cars can attack the city in the international and domestic markets is that China's automobile manufacturing technology level has been fully approaching or even surpassing the United States, Japan and European automobiles, especially in the field of new energy vehicles, China is the only country that has mastered the most critical battery, electronic control and motor technology of new energy vehicles, and the technological innovation of China's automobile manufacturing is changing with each passing day, making the traditional European, American and Japanese automobile manufacturing giants pressure doubled, and even crisis! China's automobile industry is achieving leapfrog development, the global automobile manufacturing center is also shifting to China, Chinese automobile companies in the face of the strong European, American, Japanese, South Korean automobile giants can not be afraid, constantly catch up and even achieve partial transcendence, and firmly grasp the initiative of new energy vehicle development, indicating that China's automobile manufacturing has entered a high-level development stage, China in this trillion-dollar automobile market can continue to increase its share. This also fully reflects that China's automobile manufacturing has entered the ranks of the world's advanced automobile powers, and China's automobile manufacturing has become a new symbol of China's industrial transformation and upgrading and high-end.
(The author is the Vice Chairman of the Hong Kong Periodicals Media Association)