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BEIJING.— Given China’s economic resilience and pivotal position in the global economy and supply chains, the “decoupling from China” rhetoric is not only unrealistic, but also short-sighted, experts have said.
As the world’s second-largest economy, China plays a significant role in the global supply chains and will be crucial to the world’s economic recovery, said Wichai Kinchong Choi, senior vice president of Kasikornbank, a leading Thai bank.
China’s dynamic industrial eco-system, sound infrastructure, transparent business environment and huge domestic market all make it attractive to foreign investment, Choi said. Decoupling or isolating countries or regions runs counter to globalisation, Lawrence Loh, director of the Centre for Governance and Sustainability at the National University of Singapore, said.
“We should remain steadfast in the economic rationale of globalisation,” Loh said, noting that globalisation helps promote the mobility of resources and outputs, bringing in efficiency gains for countries.
Noting that the trend of globalisation is irreversible, Koh King Kee, president of Center for New Inclusive Asia, a non-governmental Malaysian think tank, said that open, inclusive, and win-win cooperation remains the way to move forward.
According to Koh, in the last decade, China’s contribution to global economic growth stayed at about 30 percent. It is the world’s largest goods trading nation, and one of the major trading partners of more than 120 countries and regions.
“The world has become more dependent on China both as a supplier and a consumer,” he said, adding that China has been advocating multilateralism and promoting open, inclusive, and win-win cooperation through regional cooperation platforms such as the ASEAN-China Free Trade Area and the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership.
China’s Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflow, in actual use, increased 17,4 percent year on year to 723,31 billion yuan in the first six months of this year.
In U.S. dollar terms, the inflow went up 21,8 percent from a year ago to US$112,35 billion. In the second quarter, 91 percent of foreign-invested companies maintained or expanded their operations in China.
Globalisation without China is not globalization and “decoupling from China” is completely empty talk, said Yuki Izumikawa, an official of the Japanese Association for the Promotion of International Trade.
Ronnie Lins, director of the China-Brazil Centre for Research and Business, has decoupling from China” to the removal of the engine and wheels from a vehicle. —Xinhua
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