China experts? Do not put any of your money on their predictions
- Beijing has neither sent in tanks nor invaded Taiwan, but it has done a Covid U-turn, reached out to neighbours and opened again for business
If we could bet against self-styled China experts and their predictions, many of us would be quite rich by now. In business, such consistently poor performance would have got you the boot long ago. In Western punditry, though, there is no damage to reputation and promotion.
Not too long ago, in fact just two or three months ago, critics were warning Beijing would roll in the tanks against protesters against Covid-19 lockdowns (à la Benedict Rogers of Hong Kong Watch in The Telegraph) or invade Taiwan to distract from its domestic problems (such as historian Niall Ferguson in Bloomberg).
Instead, you have this news headline from yesterday: “China returns to Davos with clear message: we’re open for business.” Tell me, did anyone in Western punditry, just one person, predict this outcome? I can’t think of a single name, even though I read lots of newspapers and online news every day.
Of course, Mr Rogers has always been predicting People’s Liberation Army tanks rolling in, ever since the 2019 anti-government riots in Hong Kong. I suppose that’s one way to make a recession-proof living in Britain.
No one in the know could have mistaken Beijing’s message at Davos. Of all the senior economic officials, it sent Liu He, the familiar, moderate and reassuring face of China to a Western audience at the World Economic Forum for the global capitalist elites.
In the past month, Beijing has reversed from “zero Covid” to “living with Covid”. After two years of regulatory crackdown on Big Tech and its bosses, it’s ready to welcome the reformed sector back into the economic fold. State banks are allowed to lend to hard-hit real estate developers again.
As for the United States and Japan, China has been quietly reaching out to Asean countries over territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Beijing has also lifted an unofficial ban on Australian coal imports, and even the Labor government in Canberra has had to admit to the emergence of a less confrontational stance from the Chinese.
And, exactly who shut up Russian President Vladimir Putin about his threat of nuclear weapon use in Ukraine?