Chinese miracle

It shows that, with the right approach and continued collective efforts, one generation can travel a road that took others centuries

Today China is one of the fastest moderning countries on Earth. Extreme poverty is gone and the green transformation of the global economy runs through China. No other major nation, at any point in human history, has reduced poverty at such scale and such speed.

Out of that long road, I draw four lessons for the rest of the world.

The first lesson is political leadership dedicated to going the last mile to eradicate poverty. At the end of 2012, close to 100 million rural Chinese still lived below the poverty line. They were not in Shanghai or Shenzhen. They were in the mountains of Gansu, Guizhou and Yunnan provinces, in villages the market would never reach on its own. China sent officials to live in those villages and solve the problem family by family. Could this household run ecotourism? Could that one grow a new mountain crop, or sell handicrafts online? Should another move to a town nearby? Not cash handouts but creating productive work, for everyone, down to the very last village. I know of no other country that has attempted anything like it. By 2020 the job was done. Every last person was helped out of extreme poverty. That is what leadership dedicated to development actually means.

The second lesson is family farming. China's reforms started in the fields. Earlier this year I visited Xiaogang village in Anhui province, where it all began. In 1978, 18 farmers there divided the collective land among their families and started working it as their own. One year later the harvest jumped. Their village became the model for the whole country, and the reform that followed lifted many people out of hunger. I asked one of those farmers, now an old man, what made the difference. His answer has stayed with me. "We had no idea we were making history," he said. "We only wanted our families to eat well. That is the entire secret." A family that owns its harvest tends its land like a garden and squeezes more from each hectare than vast industrial estates manage. And a nation of hundreds of millions of such families is food secure in the most fundamental way, because the people who grow the food are the people who eat it, with the surplus flowing to the towns and the income staying in the countryside to pay for houses and schools.

The third lesson is special economic zones, concentrating industries in competitive regions. Under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, China created four zones. The most famous, Shenzhen, sat next to Hong Kong. In 1980, it was a fishing town of some 30,000 people. Today, it is a city of over 18 million, one of the fastest-growing cities in the history of the world. The idea behind it is simple. Gather the best people, the best technology and firm government support in one place and let them learn from each other.

The United States proves the same point today. Some of the finest computer talents crowd into the San Francisco Bay Area, and out of that concentration has come one of the strongest innovation hubs in the world. Many governments hesitate to favor one city over others. But for a country trying to break into world markets, there is no way around concentration. And the development paradigm of special zone travels well beyond China. I have seen it in Ethiopia. Its construction of industrial parks draws on the development experience of Shenzhen, and Chinese companies such as shoemaker Huajian helped build them.

The fourth lesson is that green is gold. Going green is not a constraint on the economy. It is a huge opportunity for jobs and prosperity. In the past, development meant pollution, because fossil fuels were the only road to wealth. The United Kingdom and the US both took that road. In 2005, when visiting Anji county, Xi Jinping, then Party secretary of Zhejiang province, said that lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets. China has since proved it in hard numbers. According to China's General Administration of Customs, electric vehicles, lithium batteries and solar products, what the Chinese call "the new three", earned close to 1.3 trillion yuan ($192.8 billion) in exports in 2025, three and a half times the level of 2020, and have made China the indispensable nation of the green economy.

The green wave has moved beyond industry into nature itself. China has the largest area of artificial afforestation by far. More than 66 billion trees have been planted since 1978. I have seen them myself in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, walls of forest rising against the desert. China is building the world's largest national park system and has brought the giant panda and the snow leopard back from the edge of extinction. As one keynote speaker at the Symposium 2026 for Eco Forum Global Guiyang in Guiyang, Guizhou province, this summer I heard Chinese colleagues explain how they are turning the restoration of rivers such as Chishui River into tourism and growth. The environment is no longer the price of development. It is an engine of it.

And the growth engine is being renewed again. The old three pillars of Chinese exports were built on intensive labor. Remarkably China remains the global leader in all three.

The new three — electric cars, batteries and solar panels — are built on green technology. Now China speaks of the next new three — artificial intelligence, robotics and innovative medicine. The change runs deeper than products. China is beginning to export capabilities, not just goods but the knowledge behind them, from drug development to intelligent manufacturing. The country that once staked its future on labor-intensive industries is now staking it on scientific innovation.

Can these lessons be copied wholesale? No. The whole system cannot be transplanted. But the lessons and inspiration can travel, and each of the four lessons has already demonstrated this in practice.

The thread that runs through all four lessons is the one those farmers in Xiaogang grasped without any theory. Under strong leadership, people have a real reason to build, and they will build farms that reward hard work, zones that gather talent and a green economy that renews the country. Each is a way of releasing the energy of ordinary people and making sure no one is left out. And that is why China's message to the developing world is one of enormous hope.

The author is the chair of the Europe-Asia Center and the former under-secretary-general of the United Nations.

The author contributed this article to China Watch, a think tank powered by China Daily. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

Contact the editor at editor@chinawatch.cn.