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China is considered the most developing country in the world; its economic wealth is now the same as the most powerful country in the world, the United States. While the U.S GDP is 18.57 trillion USD, China’s GDP has reached 11.2 trillion USD on the second place. In the beginning of the 20th century, China was one of the developing countries that undertook the production and manufacture of products that were exported to foreign countries. Its wealth had reached the bottom after Japan moved out of China after the second World War. However, in 20 years, China was able to raise their economic wealth by almost four times more. So what were the factors that drove one of the poorest countries into one of the world’s strongest countries?
Firstly, China had cheap labour. As developed countries prefered cheap labour, China was a welcoming country that met their needs. As cheap Chinese labour was exported all around the world, China started to form an economic strategy with production and manufacturing as its foundation. As China monopolized the production market, countries from all around the world gathered at the ports in China, including Shanghai and Guangzhou, to invest in Chinese markets.
Secondly, in China, there were several benefits of the communist party holding the power. The communist party enabled the government itself to take care of all the income efficiently by investing money on growing companies and purchasing the foreign land that had high potential prices.
The communist party was a great choice of government to control the massive population of China. Limiting the knowledge of Chinese citizens, China was able to prevent itself from breaking apart. In the past, when the Qing dynasty was in power, people with diverse opinions divided into groups which ended up breaking the country apart. To prevent this from happening, the Chinese government took actions such as narrowing the accessibility of internet usage and restricting certain websites.
Thridly, the last factor that drove China to success was the introduction of capitalism in large cities such as Guangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing. This system enabled people to work harder and spend more time on their work. For a country where the income was proportional to the amount of time worked, the Chinese people worked much harder and succeeded in drastically increasing the economic wealth of China. The introduction of capitalism was the most important factor that triggered China’s economy back to its original state like it was for centuries in the past (fix the inconsistency and explain why sometimes communism is better for the economy, and sometimes capitalism). For example, after the Korean war, both North and South Korea ranked among the world’s poorest countries. The difference was, unlike the North, South Korea brought capitalism into their market which fueled people to work hard to recover from the poverty. However, North Korea brought in communism without the free market trade which never worked out as the original ideology was.
So will China, at some point, be the strongest country in the world? Before the recent 200 years of Chinese history, China was a country filled with merchants and scholars who were eager to learn the science and culture of China. By looking at how the Qing dynasty and the Mongolia Empire took the lead of the world for centuries, it is evident that China taking the lead is imminent. If the current government follows the guidlines of their previous government, China would become a strong nation once again.
For more information, please visit OhMyNews.com (article in Korean).
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