The Guardian view on China under Xi Jinping: it prefers control to reform | Editorial
When China does well, the world feels nervous. How high will it rise, and how peacefully? When China falters, the world worries. How will we manage if this mighty economy slumps, or if political control of this immense society should slip gear? Of course every big country, whether it be India, Russia, Brazil or Nigeria, generates a few such anxieties, as does the European Union, but not on the same scale. Only America has the same degree of truly global importance as China. What, for example, links the recent poor performance of Jaguar Land Rover, the halving of Tata's profits, the shrinking exports of Taiwanese phone firms, the rescue of the Ecuadorean economy after it defaulted on debts, and the fall in the price of gold last month? The answer is the state of the Chinese market, the policy choices of Chinese financial institutions, and the decisions of the Chinese government.
Those decisions have an extraordinary ripple effect across the world. What is true in economics is also true in politics and military affairs. More than 100 Chinese ships, including nuclear submarines, last month churned through the waters of the South China Sea, firing off missiles and guns and generally behaving as if there was a war on. Planes zoomed overhead. The Chinese did this in an ocean area they had unilaterally designated as off limits to foreign ships, and they did it immediately before a meeting of foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Kuala Lumpur.
Continue reading...