Society

European expert calls for balanced view toward China

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-06-22 14:16

BRUSSELS - Will China's economy slow down due to problems such as internal imbalance and a real estate bubble? Or is China the only one that performed well during the economic crisis and benefited from the world's woes as claimed by some western media reports?

Amid a host of conflicting views about China's economic development, a European expert stressed the need to treat China rationally instead of going from one extreme to the other.

"We don't tend to have a balanced view about China as an economy and international player," Jonathan Holslag, a leading researcher with the Brussels Institute of Contemporary China Studies (BICCS), said during a recent interview with Xinhua.

He said China has done very successfully during the past decade, and has finished what he called the "quantitative leap forward" -- the easy part of development based on cheap labor, good infrastructure and good government policies.

What China needs now is a "quality leap forward," he stressed, while noting that the essence of the second phase has been included in China's harmonious society philosophy.

Holslag explained that the "quality leap forward" means first to lift up the quality of technological capacity in production and secondly to explore new areas of growth related to clean energy.

The third dimension is to make the development grow more rewarding to the people, he added.

"The Chinese leadership understands this very well," Holslag said.

The expert said the world should have a balanced view toward China since a right attitude would contribute to the development of China and the world as a whole.

"There is a very strong interdependence between China and the world," he said.