Zhang Weiwei, No. 32 of This Is China: Is China State Capitalism?

Source: Author of Observer: Zhang Weiwei Time: 2019-09-04

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[Public ownership dominates the main body, and most people benefit from the development process. A political force representing the overall interests of the people is the most essential feature of Chinese socialism. It is as ridiculous to describe such Chinese socialism as state capitalism as to describe today's American capitalism as "American socialism". Even liberal economists may feel ashamed of the US government's intervention in the economy.

Oriental Satellite TV's political commentary program "This is China" continues to be popular every Monday night at 21:30. In each program, Professor Zhang Weiwei, Dean of China Academy of Fudan University, combines his own experience, compares Chinese and Western cultures and constructs Chinese discourse from the hot and difficult issues at home and abroad.

In the thirty-second program on August 26, Professor Zhang Weiwei analyzed the essential characteristics of Chinese socialism. The Observer Network organizes the speech and answer sections of the program to feed the readers. ]

It has been more than a year since the United States initiated the Sino-US trade war. During this period, the United States often accused China of engaging in state capitalism, and some of our domestic publicity echoed behind the United States. Last April, a delegation of the China Research Institute of Fudan University visited Yale University in the United States. I made a speech on the Chinese model and Sino-US relations. At that time, an American scholar also asked me this question. When will you abandon the state capitalist model? I said, wrong! We are not the state capitalist model, but the Chinese socialist model.

Let me tell you a story. When the subprime mortgage crisis broke out in 2008, US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson paid a special visit to China and asked China to help the United States get out of the crisis. What is the situation in which the American capitalist model asks the Chinese socialist model for help? At that time, the United States fell into the subprime crisis, the stock market collapsed, large companies went bankrupt, the government was short of money, but wanted to rescue the market, so it issued additional treasury bonds and IMF bonds. As one of the largest foreign exchange reserve countries in the world, if China does not take the lead in buying these bonds, other countries may not want to buy them. So US Treasury Secretary Paulson flew to China and earnestly asked the Chinese government to buy American bonds to help the United States tide over the difficulties.

I remember an article in the Independent at that time saying, "The success of the American bailout plan depends not only on American taxpayers, but also on the support of China and other countries. The ultimate fate of the largest financial rescue plan in history may be China and other countries. To this end, the first thing U.S. Treasury Secretary Paulson has to do is to launch a "Tour Speech" in Beijing. But it may not be easy for Paulson to convince the Chinese and skeptical Chinese. What he needs to do... "What he needs to do is not just kneel on one knee," the Independent said.

Then, the article says that if China decides not to buy new U.S. bonds or even sell existing ones, the future of the United States will be very bleak, and of course, China's interests will suffer. Personally, I think that judgment is still realistic in retrospect.

Former US Treasury Secretary Paulson

Judging from China's economic situation at that time, foreign trade accounted for a high proportion of the total economy, and Sino-US trade accounted for a large part of it. Therefore, the US financial tsunami did have a huge negative impact on China. Chinese people really think that the world economy is you have me, I have you, no one can be alone, that is, we often talk about the loss of all the glory. The same is true of China's cultural genes, which are good for people and help each other in the same boat. So after careful consideration, the Chinese government decided to rescue the United States, increase its holdings of U.S. Treasury bonds, and enter a period of relative monetary easing. It introduced a controversial "4 trillion" policy in the future. But I think the overall "4 trillion" is still more advantageous than disadvantageous. After all, we have used 4 trillion yuan to upgrade China's infrastructure, including building the world's largest and best high-speed rail network.

At the same time, we have also seen a slight recovery from the crisis in the United States and began to be ungrateful. So I told Yale scholars during this visit that it was only a matter of time before the next big crisis of American capitalism broke out. For China, Chinese socialism was the only way to prevent the crisis from spreading to China, so China could not give up Chinese socialism, which was China's victory over the enemy. Magic weapon. I also said that I would rather not ask China for help next time the crisis breaks out in the United States. I hope you can carry the American capitalist model by yourself. How on earth is the community of human destiny built? We are all exploring, but its foundation can only be win-win cooperation, not the "zero-sum game" pursued by the United States.

I would like to take a moment here to explain more specifically why China is not state capitalism, but socialism with Chinese characteristics. Because there are at least three points in this institutional arrangement in China that are totally different from capitalism.

First, in China's economic structure, public ownership dominates, including land public ownership, the existence of a large number of state-owned enterprises in the strategic area of national economy and people's livelihood, and the state's ownership of many strategic resources, which is in sharp contrast to the dominance of private ownership in the United States. Our Constitution stipulates that in the primary stage of socialism, it is a long period of time to implement the basic economic system in which public ownership dominates and multi-ownership economy develops together. Now it has proved that this is a remarkable institutional arrangement. This model, known as mixed economy, has brought about the overall rise of China today and the rapid improvement of people's living standards.

Of course, this ownership system also has a development process, which can be roughly divided into three stages:

The first stage is the formation of state-owned economy and collective economy, or ownership by the whole people and collective ownership, after the socialist transformation in the 1950s. At that time, some people thought that we had copied the Soviet model in the first 30 years. In fact, the ownership models of China and the Soviet Union were quite different at that time. The Soviet Union adopted the policy of deprivation of private capital, and China adopted the policy of redemption. In 1936, the Soviet Union declared that it had built socialism. State ownership accounted for 99.97% of the total industrial component, almost 100%. In 1978, before the reform and opening up, the proportion of state-owned enterprises in the national economy was 56%. To a large extent, this was also to concentrate resources and build the industrial system of New China, including the national defense and science and technology system. The rest is mainly the collective economy, including a large number of "team enterprises". These enterprises became the main force of the rise of township enterprises in China after the reform and opening up, which can be said to have triggered the first industrial revolution in China, mainly in textile industry and light industry.

The second stage is the Deng Xiaoping period. At that time, it was said that public ownership was dominant, while individual economy and foreign-funded enterprises were allowed to develop. By 1997, when Comrade Deng Xiaoping died, the state-owned economy and collective economy accounted for roughly three-quarters of the national economy.

Then there is the third stage, the symbol of which can be said to be the 15th National Congress of the CPC held in 1997. The concept of public ownership has advanced with the times, including not only state-owned and collective ownership, but also state-owned and collective holding stock system. The definition of public ownership has also begun to emphasize the dominance of public assets in the total social assets, the lifeline of state-owned economy to control the national economy and play a leading role in economic development, instead of emphasizing the number of state-owned enterprises and collective enterprises or their proportion in the national economy.

This theoretical breakthrough has formed two unshakable patterns that we often talk about today: unshakably consolidating and developing the public economy; unshakably encouraging, supporting and guiding the development of the non-public economy, insisting on the equal protection of property rights, and forming a new pattern of equal competition among all kinds of ownership economies and promoting each other.

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Jiangsu Wuxi Red Bean Group, the top is the site of the old factory in 1950s, and the bottom is the Red Bean Group Industrial City. The picture is from Xinhua News Agency.

Looking back at the rise of China's mixed economic model, I am really impressed. I don't mean that our model is perfect. It has its shortcomings. Every day we talk about reform. There are sometimes contradictions between the two sectors of the state-owned economy and the private economy. But at the central level, we can see that the general guiding ideology has been to promote the two sectors to promote each other and complement each other. Although this model is still in the process of perfection, it has obviously won the international comparison.

I've talked about this many times. On Shuang 11, 2016, I happened to be talking about the Chinese model at Oxford University. I said that today the curtain of China's Tianmao Shuang11 came to an end, with a turnover of 120.7 billion yuan. What's the concept? It is Tianmao Shuang's 11-day online trading volume that exceeds India's e-commerce volume for the whole year of 2015. This is a demonstration of China's new economic vitality.

Then an Oxford scholar said, "Isn't this just a confirmation of the vitality of China's private economy?" In fact, his subtext is that China's state-owned economy is not good, and the state-owned economy is not good.

I say you make sense, but equally important, it also proves the success of China's mixed economic model. As an entrepreneur, Ma Yun's personal talent and Ali's own achievements are very important, but at the same time, we should also see such aspects as China's national network governance model. Without this model, I am afraid that China's e-commerce market will not be a Chinese local company, but the Amazon and Google days in the United States. Next. This is the case in Europe today. Even without its own search engine, the big data in Europe are almost in the hands of American companies. How could it possibly lead the fourth industrial revolution?

Behind the success of Shuang11, there are the world's largest and strongest power grid, the largest and best highway network, the largest and best high-speed railway network, the largest and best 4G network, the plan of village-to-village highway, the popularization of compulsory education for all, and so on, which are almost all driven by the state. So I think Shuang11 is a successful example of China's mixed economic model. This is my first point.

The second point is that in the process of China's development, the vast majority of Chinese people are the beneficiaries of this process. The wealth of most Chinese has risen dramatically over the past few decades, in sharp contrast to the situation in the United States. China's middle class has grown from scratch, and today it has exceeded 400 million, more than the total population of the United States. These middle classes are also middle classes in the United States today, with stable income from real estate.

A while ago, the twelfth round of high-level economic and trade consultation between China and the United States was held in Shanghai. China invited U.S. trade representative Lethizer and Finance Minister Mnuchin to visit the Huangpu River at night. Later, I saw some interesting comments from netizens. One comment said that the location of Shanghai was chosen to let them have a look. In the case of the trade war, China's economy is still flourishing and their misjudgement of the economic situation has been eliminated.

It can be said that this is the first socialist country in human history. According to purchasing power parity, it has become the world's largest economy, the world's largest middle class, the world's largest export of tourists, and the world's largest and fastest growing consumer market. China's housing ownership rate has surpassed that of all western countries, surpassing that of the United States. China has the largest foreign exchange reserves in the world, and is also the world's largest trading country in goods. China has also basically achieved universal pension and medical insurance. Although levels vary from place to place, at least the United States is not yet able to do so. Another poster said, "Look at the prosperous peaceful times in Shanghai, the representative of the United States may be thinking, ah, if this is our city in the United States, how good it would be." It seems that this netizen knows the status quo of American cities very well.

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American Supermarket

By the way, Edward Wolff, a professor of economics at New York University, has done an interesting research on the median net assets of American households from 1962 to 2013 in US dollars. In 1962, the median net assets of American households were 55,500 US dollars, equal to about 360,000 RMB, which is the level of the United States in 1962. Look more than 100 times higher than the Chinese family at that time. But by 2013, the median net household assets in the United States will only increase to $63,800, equivalent to about 450,000 yuan. I use today's exchange rate of 7, which is even lower if I use the exchange rate of 2013.

So what does the so-called median household net assets mean? That is, 50% of households are higher than that, and 50% of households are lower than that. The cross-border comparison of the median should be more realistic than that of the average. Because the United States is a country with a huge gap between the rich and the poor, it makes little sense to average out the wealth of the super-rich.

I don't have the statistics on the median net assets of Chinese households in 2013, but I think you can judge for yourselves what the median net assets level of the whole country of the United States should be in China and what level it should be in Shanghai. Then the net assets of households are all assets including real estate minus all debts. 。

I can also provide another data: 20% of Americans do not have any bank deposits, 39% of Americans have less than $1,000 in savings, and 40% of Americans can't afford $400 in emergencies. These are all public data, and they haven't changed much over the years. Some of our big online Vs just make up stories that Americans have good welfare, so they don't need to deposit. These people probably never really lived in the United States.

According to a survey conducted by Bankrate in 2019, one of the questions is what prevents you from saving money? The answer is interesting. 38% of the respondents said that the living expenses were too big to save money. 16% said that my job was not good enough, that is, the income was too low. Sixteen percent said they had not yet saved money; 13 percent said they still had to pay their debts and could not afford it; only eight percent said it was unnecessary, that is to say, smart people who could be carefree and did not need to save money, in fact, accounting for a very small proportion of the U.S. population.

This reminds me of Taiwan. Not long ago, the mainland of China announced the suspension of individual tourism pilot visits to Taiwan by mainland residents of 47 cities, which is a warning to the "Taiwan independence" forces. But a DPP figure said on television that the mainland's move was due to fears that tourists admired the "free elections" and "free air" only available in Taiwan, and the Taiwan guests present at that time could not help laughing. This remark attracted the enthusiastic ridicule of mainland netizens, one netizen said, really envy, the mainland has never seen frogs in the well, want to study what these frogs live on so confident! Another netizen said that the election chaos in the Gulf tells us how terrible and terrible a failed democracy is. Another one is that I understand what is called "one country, two intelligences", intelligence quotient. This is my second point.

The third point is that China has a political force representing the overall interests of the people, which is very important. And the United States today can not find the political power to represent the overall interests of the American people. You can ask any American you know if the United States has such political power. Western party theory generally believes that society is composed of different interest groups and each group should have its own representatives, so it needs a multi-party system, and then the party that wins through election and voting will gain the legitimacy of governance and realize the integration of the state and society. But the reality today is that this model is dividing more and more countries, not to mention many third world countries.

I have always said that China is a civilized country, a country of "the sum of a hundred countries", which has been integrated by hundreds of countries in their long history. In our own history, we have formed a tradition that I call the "unified ruling group". Once we depart from this tradition, the country will be torn apart. So I think the CPC is still the continuation and development of this political tradition to a large extent.

China's unique institutional arrangements, including the mass line, the united front and democratic centralism, have enabled 1.4 billion super-large countries to form the broadest social consensus and "work together with sleeves". Moreover, we can overcome the obstacles of vested interests, push forward the necessary reforms, and deal with the challenges that a super-large country will inevitably encounter in the process of its rise. For example, the relationship between stable reform and development, the relationship between central and local governments, the relationship between coastal areas and the mainland, the relationship between cities and countryside, the relationship between different nationalities and so on, all of which are unimaginable in the Western model of partial interest parties and can not be solved at all, and even more difficult in the American capital-led democratic system. Imagine.

China's ruling party is not the Republican Party of the United States, nor the Democratic Party of the United States. It represents a great civilization that has lasted for more than five thousand years without interruption. It bears the ultimate responsibility for the fate of its own civilization. It is this super-strong historical mission and responsibility that enables it to formulate super-long-term development goals for the country, and to work one after another, generation after generation, towards the goal of the great national rejuvenation, rather than the part-interest party model of the United States working one after another. This will also enable the Chinese model to overcome some of the most common problems in the Western model, such as populism, myopia, extremism and so on.

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I think the above three points, public ownership dominates the main body, most people benefit from the development process, a political force representing the overall interests of the people is the most essential feature of Chinese socialism. This is my personal opinion for your reference. It is as ridiculous to describe such Chinese socialism as national capitalism as to describe today's American capitalism as "American socialism". I'm afraid even liberal economists will feel ashamed of the US government's intervention in the economy.

As for the U.S. view that the industrial policy or planning ability of the Chinese model reflects national capitalism, for the Chinese, this is of course Chinese socialism. Shortly after the outbreak of the Sino-US trade war last year, I said that it is common sense for Chinese socialism to do things without the approval of American capitalism, just as Chinese people do not need the approval of English to speak Chinese.

Do the United States agree that we should develop atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs? Of course not. But China needs to develop. Do the United States agree that we should develop aerospace industry? Of course not, but China should develop. Do the United States agree with our construction of the South China Sea Islands and Reefs? Of course not. But we should build it. We say we want to reunify Taiwan. Does the United States agree? Of course not. But we must unite, and the process of peaceful reunification has begun. Do we agree that "one belt and one road" is acceptable to the United States? Neither do they agree. But we should put it forward and implement it. We say that if the situation in Hong Kong deteriorates further and the Hong Kong SAR government fails to control the unrest, the Central Committee will never sit idly by. Do the United States agree? Of course not. But when the central government should do it, it will do it.

The reason is very simple. Socialist China is an independent country. The People's Republic is a war-fighting country. China has its own unique political system, its own unique national defense system, its own independent scientific and technological system and the world's most complete industrial system. So without this capability, where will China be today's great power? Where will China rise in all directions today?

Okay, let's talk about it today. Thank you.

Discussion link

Moderator: Western society often labels us with the so-called lack of freedom, democracy, state capitalism and so on. In fact, if you pay attention to Huawei, you will find that far before the beginning of Sino-US trade frictions, Huawei wants to cooperate or acquire with American companies. Almost all of the people in the United States come out and say no. The visible hand is very strong. The United States does this for itself, but why does it always label us as national capitalism?

Zhang Weiwei: An important reason why it always talks about China's state capitalism is that the mainstream of their economics is neo-liberalism, and neo-liberalism still agrees with free market, which is the free market economy. There are two things that it resents most about China. One is industrial policy, the other is state-owned economy. In general, China needs to carry out structural reform.

I told the Americans that when we thought you were strong, we would study you seriously. For example, your private enterprises were more developed, we also studied how to develop the private economy, your stock market was more developed, and we also studied how to do it. Deng Xiaoping spoke boldly at that time. We could try, but we couldn't. Drop. I say you can also learn something from China. But eventually they found a reason, hoping to get rid of China's advantages. But I think Chairman Xi said very well. We must change what should be changed, not what should be changed, and we must not change it. This is very clear.

Xu Qinduo (host of China Radio International): In fact, the United States itself has done a lot of interference, and now it has seriously damaged its reputation. For example, it accuses US of being a "currency manipulator". Once the exchange rate breaks through 7, it immediately positioned China as a "currency manipulator". Everyone feels that this is very absurd. You don't even abide by the standards you set. China is far from what the United States has set for itself.

We also know that we are a rising country. We don't want to devalue our currency. We don't rely on devaluation to fight trade wars. Moreover, Trump has repeatedly put pressure on the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates and cut them again. To support the economic development of the United States, I want to run for election, so you must cut interest rates to make the economy look good.

Moderator: Perhaps more and more people will gradually understand that the Western definition to summarize us, in fact, is to hope that all our development into its definition of the track.

MA Zechen (Researcher, Institute of Strategic Research in the Spring and Autumn Period): It clearly knows that you are a socialist country, and it labels you a capitalist country, which is closely related to its Cold War thinking. It knows that you are a socialist camp, and it wants to turn you around and say that you are national capitalism. Professor Zhang has repeatedly proposed that their economists and policy forecasters know that China's model has some merits, but how can we jump out of the current system of the United States and recognize that China is a model worth learning?

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Questioning link

Q1: Professor Zhang is good and the host is good. I am a graduate student studying in Russia. Some of the Russian teachers and students I met all thought that China's economic system was actually a copy of the Soviet version of state capitalism in the Lenin era, including Deng Xiaoping's appreciation of some economic policies in the Lenin period in the early period of reform and opening up. What is the difference between China's current economic system and state capitalism in the Soviet era?

Zhang Weiwei: The state capitalism in Leninism is different from what we discussed earlier. This is a category of Leninism. Because Lenin spent a lot of time in Switzerland and Germany, he specifically talked about Germany as a kind of national capitalism. The government's intervention in capital is severe. At that time, he came to the conclusion that this is probably a stage before the realization of socialism, and after this stage, the next stage is socialism. During the period around the October Revolution, he had written something about German state capitalism and affirmed it in many places.

Lenin later put forward the view that state capitalism without Capitalists could be tried after the Communist Party of the Soviet Union came into power. Later, on the eve of the New Economic Policy, he wrote a well-known article entitled "On the Food Tax". He said that there are several conditions in the Soviet economy. One is the small-scale peasant economy, the other is the small commodity economy, the other is the private capitalist economy, the state capitalist economy and the other is the socialist economy. There are five forms. Then, he specifically analyzed that although national capitalism is not good, it is certainly better than small-scale peasant capitalism and commodity capitalism. This opened a window for Lenin to pursue a new economic policy and allow land leasing, foreign investment and so on to a certain extent.

Even we can learn a lot from this. The socialist transformation was from 1953 to 1956, when Chairman Mao also used the term "state capitalism". Chairman Mao said so, state capitalism under the leadership or supervision of the working class. This is somewhat similar to Lenin's "national capital without capitalists". For example, the redemption policy is strictly capitalist in nature. It gives capitalists 5% interest every year and buys their assets after a considerable period of time. But our socialist transformation has established that public ownership is dominant, state-owned economy and private economy, state ownership and collective ownership. By the end of 1956 and the beginning of 1957, it had been basically completed, and since then it has been less used as "state capitalism". Later, we used socialism all the time, and the concept of "the primary stage of socialism" was used in the period of reform and opening up.

So I don't think we need to care about a specific concept. Deng Xiaoping said that human civilization creates all advanced things. We all have to learn, including the creation of all beneficial things in capitalist society. But we no longer use state capitalism. We are beyond this category. We believe that we are society. Doctrine.

The three characteristics I have just mentioned are that public ownership occupies the main body, the majority of the people benefit, and the leadership of the Party. This is a new analytical framework. But as a historical background, we should understand Lenin's national capitalism, Chairman Mao's national capitalism, and the United States, as we mentioned earlier, denouncing China as national capitalism. This is not a concept.

Moderator: Mr. Zhang has just made it very clear that although these six words are all different concepts, this may be a point we should pay special attention to when we clarify the concept of state capitalism, especially the label that the West has labelled us.

Q2: There is a point of view that China's rise is due to the imitation of authoritarian politics in Japan, Korea and Singapore in the last century, coupled with the model of national capitalism, which has not much Chinese characteristics. What do you think of this view?

Zhang Weiwei: There is an open statement in academic circles called the East Asian Model, especially referring to the "Four Little Dragons". The rise of the four Asian dragons has some common characteristics, such as belonging to the Confucian cultural circle, attaching importance to education, people's diligence and other basic characteristics. In addition, the people respect the government relatively, and the government plays a larger role. South Korea was an economic boom when Park Chung-hee was born. They were called authoritarianism. When Taiwan was Chiang Ching-kuo, they also called authoritarianism. Singapore is Lee Kuan Yew, which is more regarded as authoritarianism. Although the Hong Kong government was not as authoritative as the other three places, it was also a colonial regime that rose during that period. The four are similar, so the outside world calls them the East Asian model.

Later, some people extended that China is also the continuation of this model. In my opinion, the Chinese model is similar to them. After all, they are all in the East Asian cultural circle and the Confucian cultural circle. Some of the above characteristics can be found in the Chinese model. But the biggest difference between the Chinese model and the Four Little Dragons is that we still have a transformation from a planned economy to a market economy to a socialist market economy, which is remarkable. In addition, we are too big, one hundred times bigger than them, one thousand times bigger.

For example, China's economic reform began in the countryside, and the people's communes became the household contract system. The reform involves 80% of the population, that is, the size of 7.8 billion people. From the complete ownership of the whole people and collective ownership of industry to the simultaneous operation of various ownership systems, this is a great change. How many contradictions were caused by the price reform we had experienced, but we all passed through. In the past, the price was stipulated by the state. One thing could only sell at this price. Later, the market decided the price and the supply and demand decided the price. Government institutional reform has also evolved from a planned economy to a market economy, such as the State Planning Commission or the Economic Commission in the past, and later to the Development and Reform Commission, which is quite different in nature from the past. These are not what the four East Asian dragons do not have, they have not undergone transformation.

Moreover, as far as scale is concerned, such as running a migrant worker Tutorial school with 100 students, which is also a school with 30,000 students in Fudan University. This is also a school, but the management method is totally different. China is a mega-hegemony, and it's not easy to do a lot of things. But the wonderful thing is that once I succeed, it will affect the whole world. My standard is international standards. Ma Yun achieves number one in China. He is number one, the largest company in the world. So this scale effect is beyond comparison with the "four small dragons".

What's more, because small economies are relatively much easier, especially on the side of a big country. If we have a better relationship with China, I'll give you one million more tourists. These small economies can develop on this one, that's all. But big countries are different. It is very difficult to develop hundreds of industries in an all-round way.

Q3: The system or electoral system of Western capitalist countries are more representative of the interests of big consortia. What advantages does China have in this respect? Thank you.

Zhang Weiwei: An important feature of the Chinese model is that public ownership occupies the main body and multiple ownership coexists. If the interests of big consortia in a country like Britain have a great impact on the whole situation, then China is probably the backbone of the whole economy by state-owned enterprises. In the strategic areas of national economy and people's livelihood, including national defense, science and technology, and energy, they have played a backbone role. Looking back now, it is very important. The reason why, as I said earlier, the Chinese socialist model is better than the American capitalist model is, to a large extent, the reason why it plays a role can be seen. After so many years of ups and downs in mixed economy, it is a good combination to explore this model. It has both the backbone of state-owned enterprises and the vitality of private enterprises. The two complement each other and complement each other. I admit that sometimes there are contradictions in this process, but the goal of the central government is to enable the two to cooperate with each other, play their respective roles, and ultimately achieve the best results.

In fact, during the whole process of globalization, the consortia of the United States, Britain and other Western countries have made a lot of money, but this wealth has not been redistributed to the ordinary people through secondary distribution. But China is now very clear that state-owned enterprises should devote 30% of their profits to social undertakings, which is the goal of 2020. So China is the only country in the world. I'm afraid there is no second one. Pensions have been growing all the time. There are many contributions from state-owned enterprises behind it.

Xu Qinduo: Let me give another example to illustrate the necessity of public ownership and state-owned enterprises. A friend went to Australia and felt very funny when he first arrived, but when he arrived in the mountains or scenic spots, there was no signal for three days, and his family was dying quickly, fearing that he would almost report his disappearance. Why is there no signal? Simply because Australian telecommunications companies are all private, private companies will not go to a small number of places to pull those wires, the cost is too high to return investment. But in any corner of China, no matter how remote the mountain villages are, there are signals.

Zhang Weiwei: China is a super-large country. For example, the West-to-East Power Transmission Project, which transfers electricity from Xinjiang to Shanghai, who does this project? Many industrial projects will not be done by private enterprises. For example, oil pipeline projects are all done by state-owned enterprises. Once done, they are thousands of kilometers. For many years, there is no return. For example, high-speed railway, only Beijing-Shanghai line is now profitable, and others are not profitable. However, these projects have led to the development of the whole economy and the overall improvement of people's living standards. I also think of an example of China Eastern Airlines (other airlines also have), the "color revolution" and "Arab Spring" in Libya in 2011 to help evacuate tens of thousands of overseas Chinese, which is the social responsibility of state-owned enterprises, must do, but private enterprises will not do.

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Engineers from the British mobile operator EE inspect Huawei's 5G equipment in London, UK, on March 15, 2019. @ Visual China

Q4: Hello, Professor Zhang. My question is very simple. As another system, another camp, how likely is Europe to eventually join the trade war?

Zhang Weiwei: So far, major European countries, especially Germany and France, or most European Union countries have openly expressed their embrace of multilateralism and free trade, which is basically the same from their practice. They feel that if China and Europe are in conflict with WTO rules, they will go to WTO arbitration, so we are more consistent with Europe on this issue. Sino-US trade has fallen a lot this year, but Sino-EU trade is still growing at a fairly fast pace. The growth of Sino-African trade and the growth of China's trade in Southeast Asia have made up for the shortage of Sino-US trade.

I believe in multilateralism. The United States always thinks that it's OK not to participate in any international organization. But if you don't, we will worship and we will do it ourselves. The world is very big. Even in a country like Japan, once the United States withdraws from TPP, Japan says that when I carry the flag, he dares to do it. Why dare China? China is the largest trading partner of more than 130 countries. The United States really does not care, we will take you with us, mutual benefit and win-win situation.

China can provide the products of the "Four Industrial Revolutions". China-EU trade need not worry too much. They have seen that 5G alone can not be provided by other countries and Europe itself, so they must seize this opportunity. I remember that we once calculated that if Europe did not use Huawei products and really spread them to everyone, it would probably increase the cost of 5 G per person by 6,700 euros, which is a burden they can not afford.