BEIJING — China’s premier warned about rising global protectionism and vowed a “bolder” approach to reform in a key address to parliament Monday, but experts said his government’s actions belie such rhetoric.
China’s Communist Party has barely missed an opportunity to claim the moral high ground over trade and globalization since President Trump set the United States on a more inward-looking and protectionist path.
Last week, Trump announced sweeping tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, provoking sharp criticism from Canada and the European Union and sparking fears of a trade war.
At the opening session of the annual meeting of the National People’s Congress, Li Keqiang painted a picture of a country on a courageous path of economic reform and trade liberalization, in the face of rising global protectionism.
China, he said, would open up its economy to foreign investors and open its markets more widely to foreign trade, echoing promises made in previous years’ speeches. More generally, he vowed that China would be “bolder” in reform.
“Reform and opening was a game-changing move in making China what it is today,” he said, adding it “remains a game-changing move” as China seeks to build what it calls a “great modern socialist country” by the centenary of the founding of Communist China in 2049.
“We must go further in freeing our minds, in deepening reform, and in opening up,” he said. “We need to give full play to the pioneering drive of the people, and encourage all localities, based on their own conditions, to dare to explore, dare to try things out, and dare to confront the toughest of issues.”
[Trump insists ‘trade wars are good, and easy to win’ after vowing new tariffs]
The irony is that, in some ways, China may be moving in the opposite direction, experts say.
Not only has its investment and trade opening largely stalled, with foreign investors increasingly grumpy at what they see as an uneven playing field, but the room for local officials to think freely, to adapt and explore — seen as a key factor in China’s past economic success — may have shrunk in recent years. Meanwhile the space for free speech, academic debate and the advocacy has also been dramatically curtailed.
“They’ve said the same thing for the past five years, so it’s difficult to take it seriously,” said Christopher Balding, an associate professor at the HSBC Business School in Shenzhen. “But what they seem to have learned is that if you say the rhetoric, it gets people’s attention, even if it is fundamentally untrue.”
Balding was speaking by telephone from a Starbucks cafe in Shenzhen, because his Internet at home had been shut off, he said, an anecdotal example of a country that was closing to the outside world rather than opening.
Trump’s protectionist rhetoric, however, had allowed China an opportunity to seize the high ground, “even if the reality is very different,” he added.
Li’s speech was also full of references to the need to rally even more closely around the “core” leadership of President Xi Jinping, and to follow Xi Jinping Thought even more closely. An anti-corruption drive that has dragged down tens of thousands of officials has enforced a much stricter loyalty to the president’s ideas and orders, experts say.
In this two-week-long session, the National People’s Congress is set to approve changes to the constitution that will remove the two-term limit on the presidency, and enshrine Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in the Communist Party’s guiding document, further cementing Xi’s position has the most powerful Chinese leader in decades.
One of Xi’s central ideas is that the Communist Party should play a leading role in every aspect of the nation’s life, from culture to the economy.
Li vowed to “completely open up” the general manufacturing sector, and allow more access to sectors such as telecommunications, medical services, education, elderly care and new energy vehicles. But experts said the proof would come when those promises were acted upon.
Despite the contrast between the rhetoric coming out of Beijing and Washington, the reality is that U.S. markets remain far more open than Chinese ones.
The World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index ranks the United States in sixth out of 190 countries and China 78th, while the Heritage Foundation’s Economic Freedom Index ranks the two countries in 18th and 110th place respectively, out of 170. On Internet and press freedom, the contrast is even more marked.
In his speech, Li said China was “fighting three critical battles,” to forestall economic and financial risks, to step up poverty alleviation and to make greater progress in addressing pollution. He vowed, as he has before, to cut taxes and red-tape for businesses, improve broadband Internet access, and make China “a country of innovators.” But there was no cause for alarm on the economy, he said.
“The fundamentals of the Chinese economy remain sound, and we have many policy tools at our disposal,” he said. “We are fully capable of forestalling systemic risks.”
Last October, central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan warned that China needed to take action to forestall a “Minsky moment” — a sudden collapse of asset prices after a long period of growth.
That was an uncharacteristically blunt comment from a Chinese official that suggested deeper concerns behind closed doors about growing financial risks around rising levels of debt and high asset prices, Balding said. Meanwhile the just-announced bailout of Anbang Insurance Group could cost $50 billion, he said.
Nevertheless, Li noted that China’s economy had grown at an annual average rate of 7.1 percent over the past five years, and set a target for growth of around 6.5 percent this year.
Defense spending, he said, would rise by 8.1 percent, its fastest pace in three years, as the country faced “profound changes in the national security environment” and continued to modernize its armed forces. Defense spending is still about a quarter of U.S. levels, but nevertheless its rapid growth, combined with a more assertive enforcement of China’s territorial claims, has rattled some of China’s neighbors. Xi has vowed to turn the military into a “world-class force” that is capable of fighting and winning wars.
“China's official defense budget growth continues to exceed official economic growth,” noted Andrew Erickson, a professor at the Naval War College’s China Maritime Institute in Newport, Rhode Island.
“This shows that Xi’s grand strategy to ‘Make China Great Again’ includes not only a ‘China dream’ generally but also a ‘strong military dream’ specifically,” he said.
Erickson said China has the world’s second largest defense budget after the United States, enabling it to achieve the largest, fastest shipbuilding expansion in modern history, the world’s largest navy, coast guard, and maritime militia by number of ships, and the world's largest conventional ballistic and cruise missile force.
Read more
Trump to launch investigation into China trade violations
Trump said he’d shrink the trade deficit with China. It just hit a record high.
Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world
Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news
Read Again https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/china-warns-about-attacks-on-free-trade-even-as-it-keeps-its-own-barriers-in-place/2018/03/05/7b8e326c-2007-11e8-946c-9420060cb7bd_story.htmlBagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "China warns about attacks on free trade, even as it keeps its own barriers in place"
Post a Comment