Isabel Hilton, Founder of China Dialogue talked to CGTN Europe on China’s 45 anniversary of reform and opening up.
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00:00 Isabel Hilton is writer and broadcaster and founder of China Dialogue. Great to
00:05 see you Isabel. Now China now is very different to China 45 years ago,
00:10 something you've reported on and certainly some of those chapters. How has
00:14 the economy changed? Gosh, how long have we got? When I first went to university in China, which is a long time ago now,
00:24 China's economy was smaller than that of Belgium and there were almost no foreign
00:30 goods on sale. There were switch watches and I think Albanian brandy
00:35 and that was it. Everything else was produced locally and frankly people were
00:39 poor. 75% of the population was on the land and leading a rather marginal
00:46 existence. So since then we've just had the world's biggest, fastest
00:50 industrial revolution. Deng Xiaoping opened China up to the global economy.
00:55 It was a moment of great globalization. China joined the World Trade
01:00 Organization and we know what happened then. I think the other
01:04 significant milestone is the announcement of the Belt and Road
01:07 Initiative in 2013, which again signals a new phase of this very rapid
01:12 development story. And what has this rapid development story meant for the
01:17 people of China? Well, the first thing it's meant is that many of them now
01:22 live somewhere different. People did move off the land and into the
01:26 cities. They exchanged largely manual agricultural work for factory work or
01:32 office work and now the digital age is upon us. So people had cash in
01:38 their pockets for probably the first time for many of them. There was
01:43 the creation of a much larger urban middle class, possibilities of travel,
01:47 of consumption. You could choose your own job. You know, when I went
01:51 again, going back to when I first went to China, the party simply assigned
01:54 you to where the party thought you would be useful and you didn't have a
01:57 lot of choice. So, you know, it was transformative. But despite that
02:02 transformation and this modernization drive, growth in China has stalled.
02:07 That post pandemic recovery everyone was hoping for hasn't materialized.
02:12 So what now? Well, this is a signal that China is in a different stage. I
02:18 mean, this very rapid catch up. There was a lot of suppressed growth in
02:21 China. There was a huge need for investment. So those were the recipes
02:25 for the first 30 years. But then as you, you know, as you develop, your
02:31 growth slows down and you have to get smarter, cleaner, greener. All of
02:36 those things need to happen or else you get stuck. And, you know, China's
02:41 very large. It doesn't want to get stuck. It wants to move on to the
02:44 next stage of development, which will be with more advanced technologies
02:48 and so on, but also trying finally to encourage greater domestic
02:53 consumption. And the government's been trying to do this for some time
02:56 now. You can't go on relying on massive investment because you just,
03:01 you know, you just you overproduce. If you can't create a market for your
03:05 goods, then, you know, you can't you can't effectively produce them. So
03:09 that's the big challenge, I think now for the Chinese economy. That's the
03:14 challenge at home. But what about the rest of the world? What happens to
03:16 the rest of the world if China's economy cools, considering how
03:21 integrated everyone is with what happens in China? It depends whether
03:26 you're a producer or a consumer country. So as the Chinese economy
03:30 slows, the countries that were supplying raw materials for
03:35 construction, for example, will definitely feel the pinch. There are
03:40 certain products like agricultural products, which China will just go on
03:44 needing and will go on consuming. For consumer countries who've been used
03:49 to Chinese gadgets coming in at good prices, I have a sense that that is
03:54 also slowing down. And you know, there are, we've got less appetite, we
03:59 have less money, we're a bit gadgeted out. So, you know, it will all be a
04:05 little calmer than it was in the first few decades since we adjust to a
04:09 different pace of things.
04:10 Oh, I'm not sure we'll ever be all gadgeted out. But it's always a
04:14 pleasure to talk to you, Isabel Hilton. Thank you very much.
04:17 Thank you.
04:18 Thank you.