What has driven China's transformation? 

Hard work and genius ideology unleashed under effective leadership and policies? “Charity” bestowed by developed countries? Plunder and exploitation of other territories in the manner of former Western colonizers？

I was born shortly before China started its reform and opening-up 40 years ago and I have lived through the changes that followed.

My father was a railway engineer and my mother, a worker in a paper-making mill. The overriding memory I have of them is that they left home early and came home late.  My two older sisters did the same, leaving home at dawn to make it to school on time and coming home when it was dark.

This lasted for years before we went to university, one after another. We've had separate lives ever since, pursuing our individual dreams.  Basically, we were expanding our own worlds.  And when hundreds of millions of people do the same thing at the same time, just like the expansion of the universe, you get to where we are pretty fast in today's China.

The labor participation rate compiled by the World Bank shows, in 1990, 79% of Chinese people of active labor age were working, compared to 65% in America.  In 2017, that gap was smaller, but still 69% vs 62%. For decades, we didn't have the luxury to enjoy life.  We wanted to change ourselves desperately. 

As we are taking stock of 40 years of trial and tribulation, the U.S. administration claimed it was, first and foremost, the U.S. that rebuilt China over the past 25 years.

Sure, by supporting China's entry to the WTO in 2001, the U.S. opened its economy to China, to borrow the words of many Americans.  But without the reform and opening-up which started in 1978, under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, we would never have enjoyed such progress. Brazil and India all have access to the U.S. market, but the U.S. hasn't managed to “rebuild” them?  Why?

China's inclusion into the world economy has not been a “one-way road” again borrowing the word from a U.S. administration official. Foreign companies, especially U.S. companies, capitalized tremendously on China's opening-up. In 2017, Ford sold 4 million cars in China, 45% of its total sales. If anybody rebuilt anybody else, China probably rebuilt many foreign companies.

Meanwhile, had China not produced affordable and quality goods for people around the world for instance in America, Americans would not have enjoyed the good life they have taken for granted for so long.

It is worth noting that, in the wake of China's WTO accession, U.S. per capita GDP was about 44,000 U.S. dollars.  By the end of 2017, it rose to almost 53,000 U.S. dollars, an increase of roughly 20 percent. Over the same period, inflation-adjusted manufacturing sector output in the U.S. rose by more than 15 percent. In this sense, should we say China helped rebuild America?

The correct way to put things really is, U.S. investment and engagement helped China's modernization, at a time when China was already taking off after a century of humiliation, after the country had already adopted the right attitude towards growth and already prepared itself with a large and well-educated labor force. My family is just a small example of how that transformation took place. For the U.S. to claim all the credit for it would be disrespectful, to say the least.

40 years of reform and opening-up did not just transform our lives, but the lives of people around the world. As that process is ongoing, it can be expected that the dividend of China's growth will continue to be felt far and wide. This will not be changed by the will of one person or one country, unless they keep dreaming of a return to their own good old days.

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