March 10, 2024 (EIRNS)—China’s Global Times called the bluff of the Wall Street Journal today. Noting that:
“In the first two months of 2024, China’s foreign trade scale hit a record high, reaching 6.61 trillion yuan (about $930.96 billion) in yuan-denominated terms, an increase of 8.7% year-on-year, customs data showed on Thursday [March 7].” Zheng Shanjie, head of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the country’s top economic planner, said on March 6 that the growth target for 2024 was 5%.
They contrast that to a collection of Wall Street Journal headlines, from August 2023 to early 2024, when the Journal published more than 160 articles “with most of them badmouthing the Chinese economy, including ‘The World Is in for Another China Shock,’ ‘China’s 40-Year Boom Is Over. What Comes Next?’ ‘How China Made a Youth Unemployment Crisis Disappear,’ ‘Is China’s Economic Predicament as Bad as Japan’s? It Could Be Worse,’ and ‘China’s Economy Is Stuck in a Vicious Cycle.’
According to the World Bank’s estimates of the growth rates of major economies in 2023, China’s economic growth was about 1.5 times that of the U.S., and about 16.5 times that of the eurozone, comprised of the 19 countries that use the euro as currency. Specifically, in 2023, China’s total electricity consumption was 2.3 times that of the U.S., and its vehicle sales were nearly twice those of the U.S.
Also, China’s crude steel output was 12.6 times that of the U.S., and its shipbuilding completion volume was more than 70 times that of the U.S.
