Is China a developing nation? I don’t think so

CAN a rich country still be a “developing country”? Objectively, if the term is to have any meaning, the answer may soon be no. But President Xi Jinping is powerful enough to redefine objective reality, and did so at the Brics (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) summit recently: “China has been and will always remain a member of developing countries,” he insisted.

This led to much hilarity online, where China watchers asked each other if this was Xi’s way of publicly noting that his nation’s period of high growth had come to an end. But it was clear, from the way the phrase was subsequently highlighted by the foreign ministry and others in the state media, that something important was concealed in the words, beyond a simple statement of solidarity with others at the summit.

And there was. China’s self-determination of its developing-country status provides it with both tangible and intangible benefits that it is loath to give up. In order to enter the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 it relinquished some, but not all, of these special benefits. Last year’s WTO negotiations over fisheries subsidies, for example, wound up with a less ambitious agreement because the natural way to manage overfishing – stricter rules for rich countries with large and modern fleets, more relaxed ones for poorer ones with small-scale, artisanal fishing communities – was ruled out. That’s because China’s huge and aggressive trawler fleet was one of the main problems any agreement needed to address, and attempts to control subsidies to these vessels responsible for overfishing would also require much poorer countries to end support to their subsistence fishermen.