as we take on the world. all of the stories that matter to you. really. never. know. how do you feel the. need for mines. while the rest of the world struggles with a corona crisis now in its 2nd or even 3rd wave the country where it all began appears to be well on its way to recovery china is reporting daily case numbers in the low 2 digits and its pandemic management appears to be paying off economically china is the only industrialized economy that has seen growth in 2020 but how reliable are the statistics china and the coronavirus from super spreader to economic winner that's our topic.

and welcome to to the point we have a great roster of guests to answer that question it's a pleasure to introduce clifford kuhn and he was a foreign correspondent for 15 years in beijing and he says china's success in dealing with the coronavirus shouldn't distract from its. rival and i'm very pleased to welcome our exclude all he's an analyst an expert on china at the german think tank s.w. pete and he says china has been partially successful in gaining international discourse power by revealing an ugly side beijing has failed to profit more significantly from the covert 1000 crisis. and we're very pleased to have with us she is a freelance journalist from china and she says compared with the financial crisis 2008. 100 recovery plan is greener more domestic and digital

oriented. so when we start out by asking you rudolph china has reported economic growth of nearly 5 percent in the 3rd quarter of this year that's a rate almost equal to what it was doing before the pandemic hit but how reliable are those statistics both on the infection rate and also on the economy while big numbers in china always difficult topic by itself but when we speak about a general trend of recovery especially compared to other major economies in the world we can say that china has been more successful than other countries in actually come going back on track and with its economic development so i think we can see well if you analyze the doctor the doctor is robust saying that of course this has increased if you dig

a little bit deeper than the question of course is where is this growth happening different problems richard ruled the population and the urban population are the gets to get actually widening and it seems to be the case is the gap widening between state owned enterprises and private enterprise as the answer is yes there as well when we'll come back to the stability and sustainability of that growth picture a little bit later but let me ask you this jensen how do the chinese people see it do they have the feel of the. a feeling that china is well and truly out of the woods beyond the pandemic and ready to sail full steam ahead. i think of the shutdowns i stephanie yes because right now if you compare what's so the private private life of people's daily activities even tighter than outside of china other than cannot go abroad for vacations. the daily activity in china seems to be pretty much the same as before that and that make happens and people definitely have a different view now what's going on side that was going outside clifford couldn't

you say in your opening statement that china success in dealing with corona shouldn't quote unquote distract from its emergence as a challenging strategic rival doesn't china's success in fact prove the comparative effectiveness of its model at least economically i think a lot of us do with what price you're prepared to pay for these situations we see at the moment a systemic battle emerging in the way between us and china which some are describing as a cold war i think this excess of the coronavirus in china but also in countries like taiwan new zealand. finland and even germany has been pretty good at dealing with it you know shows that the very tough approach is very effective but you do have to ask yourself for cost dot coms and whether you're prepared to there's a there's a lot of things that just can't happen in a democracy that can happen in china so these are this is where people have to weigh up what sort of what approach they want to take. sometimes you hear people in

the west especially businessmen and women saying that the chinese are simply more effective at getting things done what you say there's some truth to that and do the chinese themselves see it that way i think of a very interesting question and a very relevant. i think to a certain extent the very i think a. starting from even that education so if you compare what a high school student like their schedule daily and what a germans did in order to end is sort of i mean i don't believe there's a difference by race or by different nationalities i don't think that exists. to the education system and then people have been trying to perform it differently and have a different expectations of how much work and how effective that that specific person should be so i think there is a difference in that so let us take a look at how china got things done when it came to pandemic management we

have a report that takes a closer look at the measures that brought the virus under control in the city where it 1st emerged. december 2019 chinese authorities reported the 1st infections of an unknown one disease on the outbreak probably occurred i don't want market coronavirus spread at breakneck speed throughout the country and infected more and more people many died. trying to build emergency hospitals in record time shut down entire cities and closing off residential districts hundreds of thousands of people were locked down in their homes for weeks and stores remained closed to china in lockdown. those who were allowed to move around were closely monitored by the. cameras in clinical thermometers the government also reported the movement patterns of. apps provide information on individuals health and location.

without screening. in the fall of 2028 the city has its everyday life without masks without social distancing it's as if the pandemic had never existed are dictatorships better at fighting disease. let me put that. question straight away to morrow coupled with the question relating back to your opening statement because it talked about china's tactics as having an ugly side but if you see those pictures of normal life if you see these numbers on recovery couldn't you argue that the social and political benefits outweigh the costs. well what china wants to do is once through the show to the world that is responsible international power of course we have seen that as an efficient system

to. control the spread of the virus but that doesn't make china responsible international power what they want to be so the question has been china at the beginning of the crisis they were sending off to italy to spain to other countries that are really hard hit from the crisis but it is same point of time just a couple of months later chinese for diplomacy was really aggressive directly against other european countries so china actually had an opportunity to show their side because especially with the united states not filling in this role china actually had a chance of doing that but they haven't been doing so in practice because some of the equipment that was sent was of low quality and in addition they showed a really really strong and aggressive and pushy side to cash in the favor just a couple of weeks that they were delivering that so the mosque the promise is failed the question is whether and next a nation diplomacy it will be successful but domestically speaking if you look at the measures that were taken which you criticize as having an ugly side measures of

surveillance measures to some degree of social repression don't you don't you think that they did deliver real benefits to the people well we have to say that those measures that they were put in place of course they were at the price of individual liberty so of course for the chinese side there's no interest in upholding the individual liberty of individuals and the process this was already in charge and in place before was only accelerated through the through the corona crisis so if you say that the most important issue in life is state stability then of course it is really efficient and then the answer would be yes but if there are other areas which he would consider of important and human interaction in living in the country then the question then the answer would be no so let me come to kenson to ask how again how. in china see it it's sometimes said that the government's handling of the pandemic as we saw there in that report has actually boosted trust in the

government and the state would you say that's right. i would say it's right because i think in the end people look at look at what's there is out and the result is really writing front of our eyes that china's life is receding almost back to normal and. i think in china this mentality is kind of a very strong that the benefits of the many outweigh the benefits of the few and i think also the government use this opportunity to tell a really good story that they use there almost seems like a crisis and then i was actually in the chinese workers crisis means way g. that's actually a crisis hidden behind. and that's what the government has done so in fact some people who tried to report on the uglier side of the way that the government handled the crisis including in at the height of the pandemic faced very severe repression i think

a couple have in fact not been heard from in quite some time has that had no influence on public opinion i think that we also have to look at how public opinion is a formed entire neuritis so we don't really have the public's fear that's very sophisticated here for years and when you're a poor it in other countries and how the media plays a different role in time is also very different they are more advice before the government wants people to hear instead of forming this public the fear for opening a discussion and so they're broadcasting what the opinion that one should be heard instead of having a critical voices so i think that has a different layer or at a different layer to the whole story clifford if you wish speak to that point as well but i'd also like to know coming back to this idea of whether. dictatorships are better getting things done what i hate is that china manages to erect enormous medical facilities in record time manages to roll out

a mass testing programme for millions of people in record time and apparently smoothly as well where western countries struggle well over the years i've covered many major stories in china and one was the was the earthquake in sichuan in 2008 there i was witness how there was this incredible operation to to to fix the situation. and dictatorships can mobilize in this sort of way but i mean if you look at taiwan which is democracy for example also ethnically chinese largely it also had a very small very small number of cases and a very successful in controlling it so or if you look at new zealand you know that's also been very successful so i don't think it's dictatorships per se certainly they can do things they can introduce these mass projects very quickly but i think again if it comes at the cost of personal liberty you know the whistleblowers who as you mentioned who were taken away. dictatorships also create

a narrative and this narrative is what people are there's no alternative to this narrative within china because dissent is very quickly online dissent in which often stuff is very quickly. done away with so it's those are the options basically . more sort of do you think that some of the chinese tactics that we saw there in that report the measures of surveillance and so on can and will be applied in western countries as well as they seek to bring the virus under control i'm thinking for example of the corona apps and so on do you have concern that china because we've become a kind of a model in ways that you see as problematic well i think the dividing line but always at the. protection of private data i think this is just is a different approach to that in europe and the china i think more interesting will be whether a 3rd countries like in europe i don't see it happening at all but maybe in

countries that are logically may be divided between oriented themselves towards looking at the west or looking east the corona crisis definitely will convince many of them that the chinese approach is more efficient it is maybe less costly so those countries are the ones that will be more interesting to to look at and i think the chinese side has been quite efficient in approaching exactly those those 3rd countries they can send a report showed normal daily life returning in. how confident are people there and how confident are you personally looking at the situation from abroad that the situation really is stable and sustainable that the pandemic won't come roaring back for example when the cold season starts i think from a public health perspective yes i think a big controlled all the borders and they're not there they're really people you can come ina lending china without any trace and also there's

a really strict according to policies right now in china so whoever comes from abroad would have to enter a 14 day card not at home in a hotel separately so i think from public health perspective yes but if you look at from a look at from economic perspective for example right now the boost in recovery is quite large leave rely on mass to activities but china is a very important part of the entire supply chain an economic chain so how long can stay like this or how fast the economic can almost read it depends on the international and global environment as well something of that's the question people are asking right now and we're coming to that topic in just a moment but i want to have one brief look at china's corona diplomacy and the question of the vaccine. because china is now saying that it's likely to have a workable vaccine by the end of the year and that it plans to share that vaccine with its closest and neediest lies so do you think clifford coonan that

that actually will be the next big triumph for beijing or is this perhaps just a hit a dose of propaganda. i think it's a dose of propaganda i think what we've seen so far has been this wolf so-called wolf warrior diplomacy which has been extremely aggressive characterizing. the equipment that was being sent as a fact was being paid for the criticism of the response by the french government for example has been a lot of the senior diplomats in europe of being chinese diplomats in europe would be behaving very badly the recent survey by the pew research body showed that a majority of well western companies have a worse opinion of china than they did before the coronavirus i think if the vaccine comes out as it could be there's a lot of questions about the vaccine whether they've gone to stage 3 testing if it can happen so quickly how all of this is happening and so often with china you come

up against a brick wall where the questions stop you know like how did the how did the virus come about we don't know because nobody can investigate this is a big issue and you know so all of these questions are coming together so i think while the vaccine it may have a short term effect of it is effective but i think longer term these questions still remain very quickly if you would are you are you more optimistic about the vaccine than what we just heard i think is a bit more nuanced discussion though it appears to be cell because right now the frontrunners have a kind of accident chinese company is part of it but they're also joint ventures for example one of this a vaccine's is actually jointly to develop a by a german company and has investment from u.s. and from chinese company and this is somehow. on the private company level so i think they so on top of a stage promoted and and vaccine development serves the purpose of

propaganda there are actually real collaboration is behind that as well so let us now come back to the question of where things go economically from here and the fact is the global economic balance was shifting eastward even before the pandemic so does china's coronas success translate into an even more dominant position going forward. more and more higher and higher faster new houses and factories are springing up like mushrooms that creates jobs and growth after coronavirus lockdowns been plummeting exports the world's 2nd largest economy is now steaming ahead with the help of an economic stimulus package. are being made in both infrastructure and industry but china is not. a new coal power plant which in addition to cement steel other climate killer. in september the chinese head of state promised the u.n. general assembly that the country. by the year 2016.

officially china is sticking to this goal but the focus is now on unconditional growth that's one of the reasons why china will probably be the world's major economy to experience growth this year but how high is the price for this. past that question straight on to its rudolph how high is the price growth strategy as. well i think we have to have to see in the next quarter with that. proved to be a sustainable growth model from the chinese side i think at the moment some of the biggest strategic questions remain unsolved which is that many companies in europe and also in the united states are 2nd guessing to what extent their close economic relations with china are in their long term best interests so i think this is

a question that could even intensify and in the future they're not and right now there's some german company so they're profiting from increasing exports to china of course this is the case the question is how sustainable this will be because the structural problems to china is facing and has been facing for for quite some time and they are not being solved with the current stimulus. packages but of course we have to say that from the chinese that the most important goal there is to become a high tech leader and using as was mentioned before this crisis as an economic opportunity to become to become a world champion to provide the world with solutions in this way but we have to see whether the chinese state's state run process of having this connection to its connection with companies in the states will actually lead to innovation which is helpful to solving the crime the questions emerging off the core of the crisis in your opening statement you said that china's covert recovery plan is green and

digitally oriented but 26 new coal fired power plants in planning and support for the auto industry would hardly qualify as being very green so is china ultimately prioritizing rapid growth over sustainability and i think a we have to look at the so the key what is also planned so the plan is to be greener and to be more digital oriented and if you compare with the stimulates as package released a right after the financial crisis in 2008 back then that 4 trillion run was really carbon intensive and based on building highways and training and really infrastructures and right now the plan is to build the so-called new infrastructure plans. 5 g. announced a digital infrastructure is a short term look at the economic growth in the sort of quarter of this year it's a still quite highly let's say carbon intensive and this think tank

and they gave under they had a really sort of a very sorrow track record not track or the track to how chinese sort of economic boost correlated with. the carbon usage for the for the for this year and at the beginning of the pandemic is a drop down but right now it's going up again cliff or beyond that aren't there are some other hidden weaknesses in china's growth model as well and thinking a very high debt or the fact that china is very very dependent on exports could that ultimately trip china up. well i think people have been calling the collapse of the chinese growth model for a long time so i'm always a little bit wary about jumping in on this but certainly there are high levels of debt but it's also a very it's a very large economy and it's shown itself to be very flexible in dealing with changing conditions so i think i think the grow the chinese growth will continue for some time but the export factor is is as has been mentioned as well i think it

is going to come into play again at some point because domestic demand isn't isn't going to be enough to sustain there's other issues facing the chinese economy for example to such as asian quite fast and. most developed economies are developing economies the idea is to get rich before you get old and china may get old before it gets rich on a broad base level so this is a big factor as well more of a couple of you have mentioned the fact that despite china's efforts to turn the corona crisis to its public relations advantage abroad in fact wariness of china has grown recently and now the fact is that germany has declared a reset on china policy and says it wants to push back much harder for example on human rights issues on the detentions and zhang of the wars and so on but isn't germany arguably even more dependent now on china for growth for exports

for being able to sustain its export model than before. well china as we mentioned before china will be. in some areas it will be a growth engine the general direction of pivoting also away from china looking for other markets in the region i think there's a. strategic decision already been made before the kohen a crisis that was started so i think actually this the necessity to actually continue to move in some areas away from china is actually increasing the spot of course in some areas. to cooperate with and with china as a global thing and other areas of course remaining the same but i think strategically there is a move towards less dependency from china looking for other emerging markets in the region which of course let me come back very briefly to our title for one last question and the title of course asked whether china emerges from the corona crisis

as an economic winner the fact is china while the rest of the world's languages will account for over 30 percent of the world's economic growth this year and possibly into the near future as well so what do you think will china use that new power its status as winner to help pull other countries out of their own downturn. i am slightly suspicious because i think if i look at it china has to because it depends on global economy but i really see how the new strategy that china would like to focus on is don't last take stimulation so i think i'm slightly suspicious of that quick quick answer the same question i think i think it will emerge as an economic winner but i think. it will start with and say with him we will have to wait and see how the venture plays out as we have to look at see what happens in the u.s. particularly in the coming weeks which we haven't really discussed yet so yes a winner but a lot of external factors thank you very much to all of you for being with us for

this very interesting discussion and thanks to you out there for tuning in see you soon. the bottom of a. growing

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