US expert confident in country’s development

A United States expert on China said China has experienced a boom in its modernization at home and abroad and is moving from high-speed growth to high-quality development.

"In many respects, this has been a win-win for China and the world, per se," Sourabh Gupta, a senior fellow at the Institute for China-America Studies in Washington, said on Wednesday at a special Vision China event titled "Path to progress: Chinese Modernization" hosted by China Daily.

Gupta said it is not new knowledge that "China has had a unique path to modernization".

According to his retrospective analysis, this path was effectively laid out in the late 1970s, when reform and opening-up efforts began.

Then-Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping pointed out in the early 1980s that the principal contradiction at the time was that there were great material and cultural needs, but China's production level was backward and the nation needed to catch up in terms of its material manufacturing capabilities, Gupta said.

"There was this pivot at that point of time from choosing high-growth to chasing high-quality development," Gupta added.

"When I hear the words 'Chinese path to modernization' that is the first thing that comes to me about how China has tried to uniquely set its own circumstances and is now moving from just pure growth to a broader welfarist orientation in society, which is fundamentally going to be led by growth and economic expansion, but which will become more egalitarian and which will also become more green and sustainable."

Gupta said that the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China doubled down and reinforced this orientation of high-quality development, which lends credibility to the Party and the senior leadership. "China has been an absolute phenomenon over the last 40 years," he said. "China has pulled more people out of poverty more quickly than at any time in human history."

Gupta also connected China's development to the progress and prosperity of nations worldwide.

"China has interlocked itself within regional value chains. And it's very tightly bound from a trade and investment perspective with markets, both in Asia and the Western world," he said.

As China moves to the next development stage, it benefits the developing world in terms of infrastructure, financing and managerial skills, he said.

Gupta said that it could help stabilize the global economy if Chinese consumption also became a pillar of this architecture. He analyzed the "dual circulation" policy, saying that China needs to be a growth engine not only for its own benefit, but also for the rest of the world.

"The main point is that the main motor of Chinese growth will be internal and domestic, and that internal and domestic growth will be tied through dual circulation, through international circulation to the multilateral system and to the international economic environment," Gupta said.

In his speech, Gupta expressed confidence in the future of China and Chinese modernization, acknowledging that there are still challenges ahead.

"I think China can become a first-class advanced nation. That will take time still, but I think China has succeeded, and there's no reason to believe that China will not succeed, even though the next 30 years will be very difficult, both geopolitically, even pursuing high-quality development," he said.

Regarding the difficulties in China's path to modernization, Gupta gave the audience an example.

"It's become very, very clear over the past two to three years that the US strategy, economic strategy with regard to China, is no longer to create a reciprocal, beneficial exchange, as much as to constrain China's rise. In fact, at some levels to contain China's development and rise."

Gupta described China as "a rising giant which has not risen fully".

"You have to become upright; and to become upright, China wants to create as level and as competitive a playing field for itself at home and ideally abroad so that it can become strong and powerful," he said.