CHINA TODAY

New Quality Productive Forces Spur Global Development

The third plenary session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in July was in the global...

The Central Pillars of China’s Diplomacy

This year, China’s diplomacy was highlighted at three major diplomatic events in April and May – The second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, Conference of Dialogues on Asian Civilizations, and the International Horticultural Exhibition 2019 Beijing. Then followed Chinese President Xi Jinping’s busy diplomatic month of June, which saw his four overseas trips: From June 5 to 7, Xi first paid a state visit to Russia and attended the 23rd St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) held in St. Petersburg; June 12-16 saw him in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan attending the 19th summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Bishkek and the fifth summit of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures in Asia (CICA) in Dushanbe; from June 20 to 21 he headed to the DPRK for a state visit; and a week later, he flew to Osaka, Japan, for the 14th G20 Summit. In recent years, with its increasing national strength, China has proactively taken on international responsibilities as a major nation, contributing to issues of global concern. However, responding to China’s rise in the international arena, some people in the West have expressed doubt about China’s development and strategic intentions. This is illustrated by the China threat theory, claims about the collapse of China, belief about the inevitable confrontation between China and the U.S., […]

Why Is China Still a Developing Country?

When I recently referred to China as the world’s largest developing country to some of my European friends, they thought it was a humorous understatement since they have been to many Chinese cities and have the impression that some are on par with cities in developed countries in terms of convenience. Over the past years, China’s economy has grown rapidly, making it the second largest in the world, after the United States, with high-tech companies such as Tencent, Huawei, and Alibaba also emerging. Many recent Western media reports on China-U.S. trade frictions describe China as a rapidly rising developed country which may challenge the status of the United States as a leading power in the world. This year marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. The nation has indeed made great progress over the past decades. But it’s still a developing country, with a long way to go before it becomes a developed one. First, the urban-rural disparity in China remains a prominent problem to be addressed. Currently, the urbanization rate of the country is about 58 percent, lower than that of developed countries which stand at about 80 percent. The income gap between urban and rural residents needs to be narrowed since the per-capita disposable income of the former is 2.7 times that […]