[ccebook.cn]The World in 2010

Asia
The cautious leap forward
Nov 13th 2009
China prepares a new plan for uncertain times
Some will get there faster than others
In the year ahead China’s leaders will revel in the growth their country enjoys and the envy this arouses
elsewhere, especially the West. The World Expo, which begins in Shanghai in May, will help to display the
brash, futuristic face of a country determined to prove that China is the exception to global malaise. But
President Hu Jintao will still be worrying. China’s economy remains troubled and the worst ethnic unrest in
many years is proving hard to tame.
China’s economic growth may be stronger than many other countries’, but it is weaker than before the crisis
began. Rebalancing the economy to depend less on the battered export sector and more on domestic
consumption will take years. Massive stimulus spending cannot be sustained indefinitely. As Mr Hu prepares to
step down as Communist Party chief in 2012 and president in 2013, China faces a far more unsettled economic
environment than it did when he assumed those roles a decade earlier.
Such concerns will not be evident at the World Expo, which China describes as an
“economic Olympics”. As it did in the Olympic games in Beijing in 2008, China sees
this event as a huge milestone on its journey to great-power status: it casts its eye
back to the first such event in London in 1851 (the Great Exhibition as it was called)
with its purpose-built Crystal Palace, and to the one in Paris for which the Eiffel Tower was built in 1889.
Planning the inheritance
Mr Hu will worry
about his legacy
Comparisons with the glory days of the West’s industrial rise will be well received by the many Chinese who
see the Western world’s current economic distress as an opportunity to shift the balance of global power
towards China. But China’s leaders will refrain from over-egging the significance of the country’s rise. A stable
relationship with America remains of vital importance to Mr Hu (notwithstanding his continuing eagerness to
build up China’s military strength: 2010 could be the year when China’s first aircraft carrier is unveiled). The
coming year will see his government trying at least to appear to be working with America to address the
world’s problems, from economic distress to climate change.
China will commit itself to few if any sacrifices to curb its greenhouse-gas emissions. But it will not want to be
seen as a pariah following the international climate-change talks in Copenhagen in December 2009. It will talk
of reducing its carbon intensity (the amount of carbon emitted per unit of GDP) and of a date (well beyond Mr
Hu’s political horizon) when it aims, not promises, to reach a peak in its carbon emissions. It will make bigger
commitments to boost the share of renewable sources in its energy consumption. Its talk will be calibrated to
give President Barack Obama the political cover needed to push his climate-change agenda at home. But
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