Is China's economy really in trouble like the Western media depict?

Editor's note: Jamie Wright is a British political commentator and media analyst. He holds an MA in Politics and Media Communications from the University of Liverpool. The article reflects the author's views and not necessarily those of CGTN.

China's economy is experiencing some major problems. At least this is the view you would be left with if you skim through headlines coming out of the United States and the UK recently, following China's announcement of this year's growth target. "China sets lowest GDP growth targets in decades," writes the Financial Times; "China signals a new era of slower economic growth" leads the Wall Street Journal; and, from Bloomberg, "Six charts that explain China's weakening economy." The list could go on with similar coverage from the BBC, CNBC, The Guardian, and CNN.

Interestingly, the one thing all these headlines conveniently leave out is China's actual growth target, which stands between 4.5% and 5%. Notice how things look different when the figure is given. Far from looking bad, China's economy actually looks to be doing quite well.

Consider this were the US or the UK. Would the press report such levels of expected growth as something to be concerned about? Of course not. It's safe to say there would be celebrations from Wall Street to Fleet Street, with commentators falling over themselves to heap praise on policymakers and the country's sound economic fundamentals.

Clearly, the same does not apply when it comes to China. Growth of between 4.5% and 5% is somehow framed as worrying news. This only becomes possible with the help of some pretty imaginative mental acrobatics. For example, the BBC frames China's growth target as "the lowest expansion goal since 1991," as does Bloomberg, which labors to point out how it is "a steep comedown from the double-digit expansion of past years."

As any economist worth their salt would point out, the premise of this position is completely off. In fact, it doesn't take an expert to realize that 4.5% growth on a 20-trillion-dollar economy is much greater than 10 or 15% growth on a 400-billion-dollar economy, which was where China was in the early 1990s, and the basis for all these Western media stories.

Viewed from another angle, consider that if 4.5% to 5% is the lowest growth in 30 years, what does this say about the bigger economic picture? Indeed, no other country in human history has experienced such rapid and sustained levels of growth. What's more, China has achieved this without firing a single shot. No country has been invaded. No land or resources have been stolen. China has achieved all this without resorting to the colonial and neocolonial models that so well served the major powers of the past.

This presents an uncomfortable truth that Western political elites and the media-owning class don't want to acknowledge. Simply that an alternative political and economic model exists. This is to say, gone are the days when the Western idea triumphed thanks to a total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to Western liberalism, as Francis Fukuyama famously wrote. China's model is not only competing with Western liberalism and neoliberalism, but it is beating them on almost all available metrics.

This is why the truth about China has to be hidden. CNN and Fox News viewers, for example, would be surprised to learn that China's 5% growth last year represented almost a third of total global growth. Likewise, subscribers of the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal will likely be unaware that over the past five years, China's economy has grown by over 30 trillion yuan (4.3 trillion USD), the equivalent of Japan's entire economy.

This is why the truth about China has to be hidden. It mustn't be common knowledge, for example, that the homeownership rate in China is above 90%, that citizens enjoy free healthcare, that Chinese workers retire much younger than those in the West, and that life expectancy is actually higher in China than in the United States.

Instead, China's economy must be framed as riddled with problems. One day, it's the housing market. Next, it's the job market. Another day, it's consumer spending, deflation, and overcapacity. The list goes on and on. This is not to say that China doesn't have its economic challenges like any other country. But the idea that being on track to grow by between 4.5% and 5% is somehow concerning is simply ridiculous.