Foreign experts applaud China's new goals

Christian Growitsch,

director of the Fraunhofer Centre for the Economics of Materials, Halle, Germany

Note: Growitsch did not respond to the first question

2. Introducing the idea of a beautiful China in a beautiful world into Chinese national politics for the coming decades seems both very reasonable and very poetic to me. It shows that President Xi has perfectly understood that only by being in a clean and green world can the Chinese people achieve sustainable well-being.

3. China's master plan Made in China 2025 already focuses on harmonizing economic growth and environmental caution. If China moves along that road, I am sure the Chinese economy will have a successful future. This hypothesis is also supported by new disruptive technologies such as electric mobility and the block chain. These innovations have rapidly shrunk the advantage of Western economies with their incumbents in combustion engines and banking clearing the table for a new competition to start.

4. In my view, China's economic success has had several stages. The first was obviously cheap labor, and China benefitted from that in global trade. This strategy was however not sustainable and was changed years ago. China's success today stems from a combination of established high-tech industries, a rise in the number of skilled employees in increasingly innovative companies and a very large domestic market - all of this building on the backbone of domestic natural resources and partly subsidized public enterprises.