Chinese Whispers: is China in decline?
Best of the Spectator
The Spectator
4.4 • 785 Ratings
🗓️ 28 October 2024
⏱️ 95 minutes
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Summary
Is China in decline?
I was born in China in the 90s, and growing up it felt like the future was always going to be brighter. My parents were wealthier, more educated, better travelled than their parents, and it seemed assured that my generation would only have even better life chances.
But in the 2020s, China’s economic growth has slowed down. Some of the once-bright spots in its economy, like real estate, are in slow motion meltdown. In the last couple of years foreign direct investment into the country has been falling at a record pace. The youth unemployment rate from this summer shows that just under a fifth of people under 24 are jobless.
So how much of this is a considerable decline in the progress that China has made in the last miraculous half century, or is it just perhaps 'western bias' that’s blinding us to what is still a very positive picture?
On this live podcast, I discuss this question with a lively and experienced panel of China-watchers: Tom Miller, a senior analyst at Gavekal Research and author of two books on China; Isabel Hilton, a veteran international reporter and founder of the website China Dialogue; and Austin Williams, an architect by training who is also the author of numerous books on China, and teaches at the Xi'An Jiaotong-Liverpool University.
Transcript
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| 0:28.8 | Well, thank you everyone. |
| 0:31.7 | Thank you so much for coming to this live podcast. |
| 0:34.2 | Some of you may have stayed earlier for the other Spectator podcast. |
| 0:39.6 | This is the other end of the world Chinese whispers where me, I'm Cindy Yu, I talk about Chinese society, politics and history and much, much more as well. |
| 0:45.4 | And now today I want to talk about the question of whether or not China is in decline. Now it's a |
| 0:50.8 | deliberately broad question because we've got a long time. I've got a brilliant panel here to really kind of tease into all the different aspects of that |
| 0:56.9 | of what decline means and how optimistic we should be feeling about China's future |
| 1:01.8 | or how fearful some of you might be feeling. |
| 1:04.7 | I'm going to, of course, take audience questions in the second half. |
| 1:08.6 | So the first half, I'll just be discussing amongst ourselves, |
| 1:12.3 | but do please think about what we're not talking about that you would like to hear. |
| 1:17.7 | Now, a bit about me and why this topic might be interesting to you. |
| 1:22.5 | I was born in China in 1990s, and growing up there, it always felt like the future was going to be brighter. |
| 1:28.5 | You know, my parents had more education than their parents, more wealth. They were better |
| 1:33.8 | travelled or just travelled at all. And it seemed pretty assumed that my generation, |
| 1:40.8 | millennials, would have even better life chances. It wasn't even a question. But today in the |
| 1:46.5 | 2020s, China's economic growth is slowing. The once bright spots in its economy like real estate |
| 1:53.0 | or for a period of time in tech seem to be in various stages of depression or meltdown. And in the last couple of years, |
... |
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