By Zhong Sheng
In the face of trade frictions escalated by certain people in the US, China has always had the sense of morality and justice, demonstrating full confidence, strength and resilience.
China resolutely defends its core interests and the fundamental interests of its people, and firmly upholds the free trade and rules-based multilateral trading system, winning wide praise from the international community.
China has a huge market of nearly 1.4 billion people, and the largest middle-income group in the world. The ongoing consumption upgrading and the huge market potential provide great impetus for the high-quality development of China’s economy.
A few days ago, Costco, the largest wholesale chain in the US, opened its first store in China. The store made headlines in the Western world for its unexpected popularity among Chinese consumers.
Thanks to the strong demand from the Chinese market, Costco’s total market value increased by $7.8 billion in less than two days after it opened the Chinese store. Trade war or not, US companies follow the consumer to China, said Bloomberg.
China’s economic boom has made the country a fertile ground for investment that foreign companies cannot ignore. American companies are unwilling to withdraw from China, as people inside and outside the industry believe it.
Investments by US companies in China have grown this year despite the worsening trade war between Beijing and Washington, with American businesses lured by the country’s expanding consumer market, said an article published on the Financial Times.
Fortune 1000 companies in anything to do with high-end manufacturing are doing deals and expanding their China operations. They know that China will continue to be the world’s most active manufacturing centre, the article continued.
China-US economic and trade cooperation is determined by market forces that are in pursuit of win-win outcomes. Although there are some voices in the US urging American companies to withdraw from China and attempting to decouple the US economy from the Chinese economy, they cannot reverse the trend of cooperation and mutual benefit.
According to a survey recently conducted by the US-China Business Council (USCBC), American companies surveyed largely find the Chinese market lucrative, as 97% said they are profitable in China.
Craig Allen, the president of USCBC, said most American companies believe that China will remain one of the primary engines of global growth in the foreseeable future.
Obviously, to decouple from China is to decouple from opportunity and future. American companies are better than US politicians at understanding this point.
Most companies in the world are optimistic about China’s development prospects and attach importance to the opportunities in the Chinese market. In recent years, a lot of them chose to enter the Chinese market, including German wholesale giant ALDI, Japanese home furnishing chain NITORI that said it will build 1,000 stores in China by 2032, and ExxonMobil which plans to build a large-scale wholly-owned petrochemical project in China.
With the firm expansion of opening up, the charm of the Chinese market is increasing day by day. In the first seven months of the year, China’s actual utilization of foreign capital increased by 7.3 percent year on year despite the China-US trade frictions.
The fascinating story of the Chinese market reflects the logic and laws of the time, and eloquently states that the pace of China’s progress is unstoppable. Any attempt made by certain Americans to reverse the trend of the time is a violation of the law and will never succeed.
(Zhong Sheng is a pen name often used by People’s Daily to express its views on foreign policy.)
