Despite all the resentment today, caused by the aggressive policies of Chinese President Xi Jinping since 2012 in his country and in the outside world, we should not forget the hard work and impressive achievements in China´s past 50 years.

It all started with in the opening of China to the West in 1972 during Henry Kissinger´s and Richard Nixon´s tenure. The objective: Mainly counterbalancing the USSR, regarded by both countries as a hostile power.

Statesman Deng Xiaoping, who merged the stiff communist dogmas of Marx & Mao with capitalist pragmatism (using his famous argument “It doesn't matter whether the cat is white or black. The main thing is that it catches mice") carried out comprehensive reforms. He established the importance of education, science and technology, including new capitalist flowers of private ownership, at the central working conference of the party in December 1978. These reforms produced an innovative mix of prosperity and power. Under his wise leadership, China became a forward- looking technocratic dictatorship with a determined push towards progress. A unique formula for success. Especially in comparison to the USSR, which in 1991 collapsed spectacularly due to total state failure of its planned rotten economy. Deng’s aim was to make China stable and more powerful, consolidating the rule of Chinas Communist Party (CCP).

China established a unique ‘Socialist Market Economy’ dominated by state-ownership of many companies (State-owned-Enterprises, SOEs) plus an economic planning system from the local level to the very top, as well as interventionist industrial policies in accordance with the objectives of Chinas Communist Party. A hierarchical top-down-planning system, in which private actors or foreign competitors can be restrained at any time at the party´s request.  The entire economy is subject to central planning and control and interlinked with the allocation of resources, taxing, subsidies, and financial institutions as well as other industries.

China's unique success over the past decades is less the success of the state party than of hundreds of millions of hard-working people. Deng gave farmers, craftsmen, and entrepreneurs the necessary freedom, breathing space and capitalist oxygen to work hard and creatively and make money for their families, as well to invest. They are the true engines of success in China, not the party.  The entrepreneurs' candle brightened China's future.

The turbo-capitalist-attitude of the entrepreneurs and the hard work of the people made China great again, and not the stiff totalitarian dogmas of Marxism-Leninism:

- 850 million Chinese have been lifted out of poverty.

-Since 1978 until few years ago an average economic growth of nearly 10 percent.

- The establishment of many modern factories and businesses have turned China into a modern industrialized country with a global reputation in just four decades.

- China is no longer importing and copying Western technology, but captured a leading role with its own world-class products, for example electric cars (BYD, Nio), high-speed trains, electronics (Huawei), e-commerce (Alibaba) and digital products (Tik-Tok).

Interdependence between the U.S. and China in the realms of trade and currency has increased rapidly. Americans imported most of their goods from China. Joint ventures emerged in Asia, often out-sourcing jobs to China. The Chinese central bank bought American government bonds (USD 869 billion out of 7,6 trillion held by foreign countries, second after Japan). When Beijing joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, the country was finally integrated into the global economy and boomed. A decade-long honeymoon that could have gone on forever in harmony.

- A sales market with 1.4 billion consumers has become an indispensable market for many Western companies, especially in the automotive industry and in the luxury goods sector. Their sales and profits now depend on China.

After Xi came to power in 2012 several alarming things happened, comparable to a tsunami ending the Western romance period with China:

- The brutal crushing of freedom and democracy by Beijing's total claim to power in Hong Kong in 2019 and the de facto abandonment of the agreed principle of "one country, two systems for 50 years”. The treaty, concluded with London in 1984, was simply undermined and no longer respected.

-Total mismanagement of the Corona crisis, resembling a dangerous roller coaster ride. These developments amounted to huge mistakes of Xi and his party:

Dangerous gain-of-function-experiments and even accidents with the Corona virus at the Wuhan Institute for Virology for years. In the fall of 2019 and in early 2020, a total denial of the Wuhan Institute of Virology involvements. Courageous doctors were even punished for their candid remarks. There was a need for an open information policy and a rapid lock-down in Wuhan in December 2019. Both delayed by the CCP for months, which contributed to the spread of the virus in China and globally. Followed from mid 2020 to 2022 by strict lockdowns in many cities. Later rapid re-openings as a result of numerous protests and a severe economic slow-down.

-An increasing suppression of freedom, which is the ethos of the United States of America and the West.

Dissidents of all kinds and religions were mercilessly persecuted. We met Ai Weiwei in Berlin. The most famous artists from China had to leave his country in 2015 due to its tun to neo-Mao-totalitarism, neglect of human rights, the absence of freedom of speech and too much corruption. Each year around 300,000 Chinese leave the mainland, many young talented people, the future of the country resulting in a brain drain.

In 2018, a law was passed stipulating insulting heroes and martyrs a crime punishable by up to three years in prison. The revival of Maoism is part of President Xi’s campaign to fight “historical nihilism,” a phrase the party uses for any interpretation of historical events running counter to its official narrative. Kissinger remarked: “The leadership now views Mao now as 30 percent bad, but 70 percent good.” Just remember: Mao (and not the Japanese invaders) killed over 60 million Chinese by executions, persecution, prison labor and starvation. More than Adolf Hitler. He was a brutal dictator too with no respect for humanity and freedom.

Now Mao’s ghost is back on stage. Xi even stepped in his footsteps as an omnipotent dictator.

- The brutal treatment of minorities, the Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang and the Buddhist Tibetans, is shocking and a clear violation of UN rules. Many were mercilessly persecuted. Disrespect for diversity with no tolerance and human rights.

- China has been making massive use of industrial espionage with the objective of exploiting know-how of Western companies and of gaining a competitive advantage. In her report of 22 July 2020, U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn cited FBI figures: 90 percent of the cases of industrial espionage from 2011 to 2018 have links to China. In the summer of 2020 alone, the authority investigated 1000 ongoing espionage cases. In July 2020, for example, Chinese hackers gained access to corona vaccine research in the United States. In the same year, Chinese military personnel hacked into the Equifax computer and stole the personal data of 145 million Americans. China has stolen intellectual property (IP) from one in five U.S. companies. Many companies in China did not pay for foreign patents. Wherever there is an opportunity, China uses all illegal means to steal intellectual property. That is called ‘Chinese patriotism’ because it strengthens the country.

- In early 2023, a Chinese high-altitude balloon flew over the United States. It was shot down on February 4. It contained the equivalent of two railroad cars of spy equipment, antennas, solar panels and several propellers to actively maneuver the balloon. It was not a passive ‘weather balloon’ blown off course by the wind, as Beijing claimed.

- China is flooding global markets with nine state-pampered and dumped goods in key industries, while blocking imported competition, the European Commission stated in its report “On Significant Distortions in the Economy of the People’s Republic of China”, April 10, 2024.

In New Energy Vehicles, environmental goods like solar cells, wind turbines, and geothermal heat pumps, semiconductors, telecommunications equipment, high-speed rail industry, steel, aluminum, chemicals or ceramics. China over years triggered a surge of low-priced Chinese exports. State support encompasses the national, regional and municipal levels. The industries follow the government's direction and implement the government's policy objectives. There is a high degree of intervention by the Chinese government.

In 2005, China started its New Energy Vehicles (NEV) industry. Supported by the central and local governments throughout the value chain, from essential raw materials to batteries to the NEVs, China became the world´s first producer and exporter of NEVs - flooding the world with cheaper and well-engineered products.

There is a large toolbox for state support:

It comprises widespread instruments, for example the use of large State-owned Enterprises (SOEs). Easy and better access to finance, like government-backed investment funds (with the largest Big Fund) and banks. Favorable market lending, subsidies and grants, financial support from the various state levels in the form of financial transfers, preferential loans, export incentives, tax relief, value added tax rebate, reduction on enterprise income tax or land-use cost relief and other direct financial support measures. Procurement preferences. Deployment of a wide range of regulatory tools, including fiscal, financial, investment or pricing measures. Even cheap use of forced labor. Consolidation of companies.  Curbing overcapacity with the largest manufacturing capacities. Plus protecting the domestic market against foreign competitors and promoting Chinese firms (like Huawei) abroad.