The Critical Lessons From China’s Success

What stops us learning from China?

Over the last 40 years, the Chinese government has produced one of the greatest transformations in human history. In the 1970's China was a communist country where more than 88% of citizens lived on less than $US 2 a day. In 2017, that number was less than 6%. The Chinese middle class — as measured by western standards — is forecast to reach 550 million by 2022. For the last 25 years average economic growth has been around 9.5% per year. National income has been doubling every eight years. No other nation has been able to produce such an uninterrupted run of growth.

It has impressively learnt from its mistakes, being the first communist country to experiment with limited capitalism. From the results of those experiments, China then changed its most basic operation. China has reformed its state owned enterprises. It has so far avoided the harmful recessions; it largely avoided the devastation caused by the Great Recession of 2007/8. Arguably, China’s continued growth and demand even protected western economies from the worst of the Great Recession. China has been able to invest enormous sums of money building infrastructure to make its economy efficient. It has been able to support its industry to grow and compete globally. It has been able to consistently plan for its future with 13…