2023, A Year Might be Forgotten in the History of China

At the end of the year 2022, China’s government dropped the ‘zero-Covid’ policy. Inevitably, someone lost their lives while most of the others felt relieved that they would hopefully get back to the normal life in 2023.

However, the expected strong economic rebound turned out to be much milder.  And the huge public expenses during the pandemic pushed the debts of some local governments even higher. A few temporary medical workers even protested because they were not paid on time.

Then the crisis of the major property groups broke out. Some critics were lingering on the topic like vultures over a carcass and even imagined how the crisis would drag the global economy down or ended up into a political turmoil. If that was the case, it would be something big in the history.

Well, now at the end of the year 2023, none of the prediction became the reality.

Political Stability

After the sudden change of the epidemic policies, there were all kinds of sarcasms on the internet. Then the rumors spread when two ministers went ‘missing’ and the former Premier Li Keqiang passed away.

But these incidents could not shake the CCP regime at all. The activities of the Member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau were reported by the state-owned media regularly, which indicated the core of the political system ran more smoothly.

Some high-level corrupted military officers were arrested. The personal changes seldom hindered the preparation of the possible unification operations in the future. It reflected the Party’s absolute leadership over the military.

Just several days ago, Dong Jun was named as the new Defence Minister. Case closed.

Economic Rebound

The crisis of Evergrande actually loomed years ago. CCP had already regulated it and other property groups to a soft landing. Unfortunately, the pandemic just came in as the last straw.

As a long-term ruling party, CCP is somewhat like an unlimited company. It will take the responsibility to restart and supervise the construction, and try its best to make sure that the buyers get their apartments after the property groups failed to do so. The buyers are still facing difficulties, but many of them have faith in the Party and the government. After all, this is the only hope.

Similarly, the Party won’t let the local governments just go bankrupted as what happened in some western countries. It is true that the central government announced that it would not provide ‘bottom-line guarantee’ for the local debts. However, the whole political logic in China is different from the western system. CCP will prevent any dramatic impact and eliminate or relieve the debt through a sophisticated state-owned financial system. The possible solution is that the local governments will pay the debt literally ‘on their own’ but actually with the help of the system. And the officials who still expand the debt recklessly will pay the political price.

On the other hand, the urban renewal was encouraged in the areas where the debts were moderate. I visited several construction sites in Shanghai in 2023. Many almost-hundred-year-old houses were torn down in the downtown to build new officer buildings or commercial complex. In the suburb areas of relatively poor connectivity, some old office areas were replaced with the new affordable housing. The construction can boost the GDP higher but the renewal itself was truly needed.

The infrastructure projects such as charging stations, solar power stations and 5G base stations were also pushed forward across the country. Just on Dec. 26 and 27, five new high-speed railway lines went into service.

Frankly, China’s economic performance was much better than most of the other major economies and it had more policy tools in hand so that I won’t worry about it at all.

‘Wolf Warrior’ Retreating?

In 2023, the diplomat Zhao Lijian was moved to a new position and faded out of the public view. The ambassador Lu Shaye kept in a low profile after a diplomatic incident. It seemed that China had changed its diplomatic course back from the so called ‘Wolf Warrior Diplomacy’.

However, according to the Department of the Foreign Affairs, the name was just a ‘narrative trap’. “In Chinese diplomacy, there is no shortage of kindness and goodwill. But if faced with wolves, Chinese diplomats have no choice but to confront them head on and protect our motherland,” Qin Gang said when he was the Foreign Minister.

‘Wolf Warrior Diplomacy’ could be viewed as a defensive gesture when the Sino-US relations deteriorated and when China was accused of causing the Covid pandemic. Now the pandemic is gone and the Sino-US relations is relatively ‘stabilized’ after the leaders met, there were fewer occasions that the plain languages were needed than before. But it is still ‘allowed’. The diplomat Hua Chunying is always criticizing the US with a sarcastic tone on X.

Just put the ‘language phenomenon’ aside, China did protect its interests firmly facing the US and Philippines in 2023. There were not any solid evidences that China was behind the civil conflict of Myanmar to crackdown the cross-border telecom and online fraud, but many Chinese believed so and regarded it as a ‘diplomatic victory’.

Ironically, another ‘diplomatic victory’ was a gift from the US. China kept an impartial position of promoting peace which is similar to those of the Middle East countries while the pro-Israel policy of the US aroused widespread criticism and even anger in the non-Western countries.

Technological Competition

It was clear now that the US could not completely curb the develop of the Chinese chip industry. The US firms could not quit the market of China, either. China’s technological dominance in the rare earth chemistry and the batteries served as a leverage to balance off the pressure.

AI tools such as ChatGPT could boost efficiency and productivity in many industries. China’s big tech firms were steps behind. However, the large numbers of the users in China can support the development and finally generate a capable Large Language Model in Chinese. It might be never as good as ChatGPT for English users, but it would be good enough to boost the domestic productivity.

When the future historians wrote about the year 2023, they would elaborate the ChatGPT, the Gaza War and the second year of the Ukraine War. But nothing specific about China seemed worth being written down. In the long history of China, a new government generated through a normal procedure, a crisis put out before causing a large-scale social turmoil or an earthquake in the remote area would be represented as several sentences at most or even not mentioned at all. That might be a good thing.