China’s Richer Than It Thinks

Almost any foreign official, businessman or journalist visiting Beijing has heard the mantra that China can’t be expected to open up its markets or meet more stringent international standards because it’s still a developing economy. Maybe that argument was valid 20 years ago. Now it’s increasingly tenuous. More importantly, it’s damaging to China and the world.

Pleading poverty ignores the tremendous economic progress China has made in the last few decades. When China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, it was the world’s sixth-largest economy and at an early stage of reorganizing state-owned enterprises to compete globally. China is now the world’s second-largest economy and its largest trading nation. It’s home to some of the largest globally competitive firms, accounting for 115 of the Fortune 500 largest companies in the world in 2017.