ExclusiveChina’s globalisation pioneer says it is now time to look closer to home amid US decoupling moves

Wang Jian wrote a famous article in 1988 that laid out the blueprint for China to take advantage of globalisation to become the factory of the world

But now, amid the fallout from the coronavirus, the veteran economist believes it is ‘increasingly urgent’ for China to rely on itself for future development

3-MIN READ3-MIN

Wang Jian published an article in the official ‘Economic Daily’ in 1988 arguing that China should take advantage of its cheap labour force to position itself as a global manufacturing hub. Photo: DPA

Published: 10:00pm, 8 Jun 2020Updated: 4:10pm, 9 Jun 2020

A top economist whose strategic thinking about China’s role in global value chains helped turn the country into the world’s factory says it is now time for Beijing to look inward for growth as the outside world is becoming more unpredictable.

Early in 1988, when China had little capital, Wang Jian published an article in the official Economic Daily arguing the country should take advantage of its cheap labour force to position itself as a global manufacturing hub by importing components and then exporting finished products to rich economies.

Under the export-oriented strategy, a government policy literally translated from Chinese as “big in, big out”, China rose from an economic backwater to a manufacturing powerhouse.

Three decades later, Wang believes it is now time to make choices that will bring China’s economic miracle to “a new peak”.

Any large country should rely on its domestic market

Wang Jian

“The impact of the coronavirus pandemic on international supply chains and external demand is hard to estimate, we need to expand domestic demand as much as possible. That is what we can control,” 65-year-old Wang, who is now head of the Beijing-based China Society of Macroeconomics, a think tank associated with the economic planning agency, told the South China Morning Post.

“Any large country should rely on its domestic market.”

According to Wang, China’s export-driven economic model – with exports accounting for 36.04 per cent of Chinese growth at its peak in 2006 – can only last for a certain period.