Like China’s accession to the WTO in 2001, the country’s new strategy for achieving economic self-reliance will challenge the West. It demands a different set of responses than the old one did.
A Volkswagen employee in a Foshan plant. Leonard argues that China hopes “new rules on data, research and development, and standards will force prominent Western companies to acquire Chinese characteristics.” Credit: Volkswagen
Some months ago, the Chinese authorities approached some of the biggest foreign companies in the country and asked them to tap a representative to participate in a small closed-door gathering on China’s new economic strategy. The meeting was to be with a senior official at an undisclosed time and location, and, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter who insisted on anonymity to discuss it, companies were asked to send only ethnic Chinese representatives. In both content and form, the episode captured China’s eagerness to make its economy more recognizably Chinese, developing its own technologies and energy sources while relying on domestic consumption rather than on foreign demand.
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s new strategy centers on the concept of “dual circulation.” Behind the technical-sounding phrase lies an idea that could change the global economic order. Instead of operating as a single economy that is linked to the world through trade a
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