Beijing Consensus
The policies are thought to have contributed to China's "economic miracle" and eightfold growth in gross national product over two decades.
[13]: 49–51 For example, Academic Zhang Weiwei characterizes the model as focusing on down-to-earth pragmatic concern with serving the people;[12] constant trial and error experimentation;[12] gradual reform rather than neo-liberal economic shock therapy;[12] a strong and pro-development state;[12] "selective cultural borrowing" of foreign ideas;[12] a pattern of implementing easy reforms first, difficult ones later.
[16] The model began to receive considerable attention following the 2008-9 severe economic downturn as Western economies faltered and recovered slowly while Chinese economic growth remained dynamic; comparisons began to portray the China Model or the "Beijing Consensus" as China's alternative to the "Washington Consensus" liberal-market approach.
Under Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping, China has become an active participant: launching the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), increasing foreign aid and investment around the world, and by providing training in economic management and various civil-service skills for more than 10,000 bureaucrats from other developing countries.
[8] The term's birth into the mainstream political lexicon was in 2004 when the United Kingdom's Foreign Policy Centre published a paper by Joshua Cooper Ramo titled The Beijing Consensus.
[9] The third guideline urges a policy of self-determination, where the less-developed nations use leverage to keep the superpowers in check and assure their own financial sovereignty.
[19] On the economic side, he argues that though the flow of labor, capital, and commodities resembles a free-market economy, the government still has a tight grip on key industries, including "utilities, transportation, telecommunications, finance, and the media."
In the light of this model, Fang believes that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) should be exalted because its presidency with a term limit is a "merit-based system."
Fang holds that the five-year, two-term presidential term reflects the virtue of "constitutionalization", although Chinese President is a figurehead with limited powers.
Differentiating this model from previous communist leadership, Fang proposes that the term limit institutes "party-based meritocracy," internally electing a strong leader with merits and competency: "In the current regime under the CCP, the long-practiced hereditary succession in dynastic politics came to an end.
"[10] Stefan Halper, Director of American Studies at the Department of Politics, University of Cambridge and foreign policy official in the Nixon, Ford, and Reagan administrations, offered his own interpretation of the term in his 2012 book, The Beijing Consensus: How China's Authoritarian Model Will Dominate the Twenty-First Century.
It is one that Beijing eagerly exports (as demonstrated by its support of other illiberal regimes, such as those in Sudan, Angola, or Zimbabwe) by offering developing countries "no-strings-attached gifts and loans", rather than "promoting democracy through economic aid", as does the West.
[24] He sees this as establishing a trend "Away from the market-democratic model—and toward a new type of capitalism, which can flourish without the values and norms of Western liberalism"[25] which could ultimately supplant the Washington consensus.
Also, he posits that the "explanatory power"—the ability to explain different situations using the theory—is the main concern for the IR with Chinese Characteristics than defining what it is precisely.
Critics at the free-market oriented magazine The Economist have called the model "unclear" and an invention of "American think-tank eggheads" and "plumage-puffed Chinese academics".
[15] In May 2012, The New York Times stated that China had released data that "showed its economy was continuing to weaken", and quoted a political scientist at Renmin University of China in Beijing (Zhang Ming) as saying: Many economic problems that we face are actually political problems in disguise, such as the nature of the economy, the nature of the ownership system in the country and groups of vested interests.
Shen Hong of the Unirule Institute of Economics warned against abandoning Deng Xiaoping's post-1978 neoliberal reforms in China, telling the Financial Times: "Without a doubt, reform and opening up eliminated the ideological conflict between China and the US, as well as the whole western world, and gradually brought convergence in terms of values".
