Hi, my name is David Zweig and this is China and the World,
which is basically part two of our course on Chinese politics.
Now, today as we see the degree of China's integration with the global economy,
it's really hard to recall that 40 years ago China was a closed economy with very,
very limited interaction with the global system.
The table that you see now shows that back in
1978 total trade was merely $20 billion.
And, total exports were just $9.8 billion, which is really quite small.
And, what you see here, by the time we get to 2014,
foreign trade has increased by a factor of 200, right?
And these are, there are key years when we will see this jump.
One of them is 1992 when Deng Xiaoping takes his Southern trip and
reinvigorates the reform movement,
which had slowed down after the Tiananmen Square events in 1989.
And so, he really invigorates it and you can see major jumps
here in terms of all of the indicators of engagements.
And the same thing happens in 2000 at the time China
joins 2000, 2001 China joins the WTO.
And, so we again see a major jump here, more than doubling between 2000 and 2004.
And we'll talk about China's decision to enter WTO,
the fact that it was controversial.
But as you can see, from these numbers,
it was clearly a successful decision for China.
Now since 1978, China has become very deeply engaged with the global economy and
has become, under Xi Jinping, under the current leader,
a much more assertive player in the international system.
Now if we look at some of the indicators of China's deep integration with
the global economy, we see, for example, it's the number one energy consumer and
oil importer in the world, surpassing the United States.
It's the number one trading nation in the world surpassing Germany.
It's the primary trading partner of over 140 countries
which gives it a lot of influence in terms of the globally economy.
It is a major global investor now investing in territories like Africa,
Latin America they're depending on Chinese money for their own growth.
For a long time it was the workshop for the world,
overseas Chinese from South East Asia.
Major multinational corporation and high tech companies, like GE,
were bringing in technology into China and manufacturing products there
because they could get relatively highly skilled and less expensive labor.
It's home to over 1100 research labs for major multinational
corporations who decide that there's enough talent in China.
Graduates of the university, some people coming back to go and
work in their laboratories and do cutting edge, or
trying to do cutting edge research in China.
It's the largest holder of US debt which gives
it some leverage of the United States economy.
It's the number one recipient of foreign direct investment,
surpassing the United States.
Number, unfortunately, sadly say,
it really is the number one carbon emitter in the world.
And that's largely because it consumes so much energy and has been consuming so
much energy because of the economic growth.
And one of the reasons it's a large emitter of carbon dioxide is the fact
that it's the number one auto market in the world.
And so cars are being sold all over China, and polluting China and in fact,
polluting the global environment.
For large High end luxury goods it's the number one importer,
the number one purchaser of these high quality products,
like purses and watches, and
that kind of expensive, very expensive goods.
And that's had an impact here in Hong Kong,
because many Chinese from the main land with their big wads with lots of
money come down here and buy these products in the stores here.
It's the largest holder of foreign reserves and for
many years after 2008 financial crisis,
global financial crisis, it was the primary engine of global growth.
On the assertive side though we can also see that, and again, next class
will go into this in more detail, that it has proposed its own development bank.
The AIIB, The Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, and
it has now become much more assertive in challenging its neighbors,
particularly the Japanese in the East China Sea and
the countries of Southeast Asia, Philippines and Vietnam, in particular,
in the South China Sea where they have disputes over territorial claims.
Now while on this course we will explore the causes and
implications of China's integration with the global economy.
You should stop for just a second and think.
Let's go back, go back to 1978 and think why did Chinese
leaders actually decide to enter onto the world stage?
David ZweigChair Professor of the Division of Social Science and Director of Center on China’s Transnational Relations
