Most economists reckon that by 2050 China will be the largest economy in the world.

What do we really know about China?

Here is a New Year’s Quiz:

1. Name five large cities in China, other than Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong or Tianjin.
2. Name five leading Chinese politicians.
3. Name five prominent Chinese women.
4. Name five leading Chinese companies.
5. Name five leading Chinese brands.

One point for each correct answer. That’s a maximum of 25 points.

If you get more than 3 points, you are almost certainly Chinese. Under 3, I suspect, typical of most people living in Europe and the United States.

Engaging with China is not easy.

At one level China appears to be an increasingly free market country, doing trade and business in exactly the same way as any other free market country. But then suddenly the rules will change. The Party steps in. The difficulty is that it is a children’s board game, where you have lost the rules and are never quite sure where the rules of the free market finish and the influence of the Party begins.

Why is Falun Gong banned?

Just when one thinks that China is becoming a more open society, they arrest pro democracy activists, subject them to a short trial and lock them up.

We all want to get on well with China. So, perhaps more than any other country, we always give China the benefit of the doubt.

We are all very conscious that China is already a very significant player in the world’s financial markets.
Chinese banks were notably comparatively unaffected by the recent meltdown in the world’s global financial institutions.

If China stops holding US dollars, the US economy would be in difficulties.

So far as the UK is concerned, at the present moment, we are managing to pay our debts by the Government simply printing more money!

Clearly this approach can’t last for ever and in due course we will need the world and in particular China to purchase more UK debt.

So in a comparatively short period of time, China has become a significant influence in global financial markets.

In negotiations, such as the Copenhagen Climate Change talks, China is something of a paradox. It is on the one hand a super power, one of the largest nations in the world, a member of the UN Security Council and on track to becoming the largest economy in the world within the lifetime of most of those alive today. Yet, on the other hand, China is still a developing country, and notwithstanding that China has lifted millions of its citizens out of poverty, there are still a significant number of people in China living off less than $1 a day.

So, infuriatingly to many in the United States, they find themselves in what appears to be a paradoxical situation of the world giving money to China as a developing nation to deal with Climate Change when at the same time US banks and financial institutions are increasingly beholden to China to underwrite their indebtedness.

In the meantime, China continues to generate ever greater influence overseas, particularly in continents such as Africa, simply by trading money for raw materials in an uncomplicated way. Whereas Western donors accuse African countries of “corruption” and make their development assistance ever more conditional, the Chinese simply arrive in town looking to purchase iron ore, diamonds, gold, oil, minerals and pay hard cash in return.

China’s ostensible political approach to global politics is one of complete non-intervention. Somewhere in the world there is a solitary single UN Chinese peace keeper, in contrast to the thousands of UN peace keepers from all the other members of the UN Security Council and many other UN member states, the message clearly being that China won’t interfere politically with other countries in the world and doesn’t expect other countries in the world to interfere politically with China.

So we are going on an interesting journey where until 2035 the world’s largest economy will still be the United States but according to projections by Goldman Sachs, by 2050 China will be far and away the largest economy, followed, some way behind, by the United States, India, Brazil, Mexico, Russia, Indonesia, Japan and it is only then that we come to European countries, such as the UK and Germany – some way behind and only just ahead of Nigeria, with projected sizes of national economies.

It is difficult to think of any other time in human civilisation where a country has peacefully come from the back of the pack and with such speed, raced to the front. All of this has happened with us in the West still knowing practically nothing about modern China or those who run it, its power structures or ambition.

If the 21st century is going to be the century that sees the rise of China as a global player, we all have a duty to understand a lot more about China’s complexes, contradictions, and what makes it work.

For over 200 years we have lived in a Western-made world – indeed one where the very concept of being modern was supposedly synonymous with being Western or American.


The 21st century is going to be different. It will see the rise of increasingly powerful non-Western countries, but particularly China, and in this new century of “contested modernity”, the key player is going to be China.

China’s rise is going to change the world as we know it from one that in living memory has been made in the West, to a world increasingly shaped by China.


Tony Baldry has been a UK Member of Parliament for 27 years, a former Government Minister for 8 years, and former Chairman of the Commons Select Committee on International Development.