China deepens its commitment to the fourth Industrial Revolution

The Chinese economy, the second largest in the world (US$ 1.6 trillion/19% of global GDP), grew 4.8% in the first 3 quarters of the year. All this happens while industrial product increases above nominal GDP, with manufacturing that rose 5.4%, and industrial value added that increased 5.8% annually, while investment in the manufacturing industry focused in the “new productive forces” high technology, which are those of the “digital economy”, expanded +9.2% annually, and practically doubled the GDP growth.

Domestic consumption showed an upward trend, and rose 3.3% in the first 3 quarters; and this occurred with a consumer price index (inflation) that rose 0.3% annually at that stage.

To stimulate demand, the government launched a 1 trillion yuan 30/40/50-year ultra-long bond line, aimed at financing a large-scale renovation of capital goods, as well as encouraging the purchase of consumption.

International trade also stimulates demand, and reached US$4.57 trillion in the first 3 quarters of 2024, with a record growth of 5.3% annually.

It is worth noting that foreign sales are mainly of high-tech equipment such as electric vehicles, lithium batteries, and photovoltaic products, which have increased more than 30% in the last year.

Under these conditions, international trade would exceed US$6 trillion by the end of 2024, which once again places China in the role of the world’s leading trading power, with a GDP/international trade ratio of more than 70%, making it the most integrated country of the capitalist system in the 21st century.

What the People’s Republic is doing now is the exact opposite of all autarky. The premise on which Xi Jinping acts is that there has emerged a global society absolutely integrated by the technological revolutionin which the “inside” and the “outside” tend to disappear or have already disappeared.

The real estate market, after experiencing 3 consecutive years of adjustment, would have found its bottom; and now a special fund of US$562 billion – “the White List” – has been established to finance all duly qualified housing projects, and thus definitively stabilize their market in the People’s Republic.

China aims to grow at 5% annually in 2024; and Goldman Sachs, among others, agrees with this perspective, and that is why it has increased its forecast, taking it from 4.7% to 4.9% for the year.

Xi Jinping has set as an absolute priority strengthening the economy of the People’s Republic internally, which he considers a political necessity in the face of the exacerbation of competition by the USdetermined to prevent their access to the advanced technologies of the 4th Industrial Revolution; and at the same time systematically deploy the autonomous, domestically generated development of these technologies, above all Artificial Intelligence, the Internet of Things, and robotization.

Xi Jinping has pointed out that the People’s Republic is 10 years behind the US in the deployment of the “digital economy”, which only reaches 40% of GDP, while in the US it is 100%; and must necessarily close the gap in the next 10 years (2025/2035).

This has the character of a national urgency, in the conviction that its destiny in the 21st century plays out there. China is a civilization with 5,000 years of history, accustomed to always thinking in the long term, and that values ​​intelligence and lucidity more than military power or economic superiority.

That is why the response to the North American challenge is indirect, and rejects all symmetry; and consists of systematically opening its economy to full competition with the world system, inviting large transnational companies, and in one place, North American companies, to invest in all its activities.

Hence heElon Musk’s Tesla company is the second largest producer of electric vehicles of the People’s Republic, with a fully automated plant located in Shanghai, which is more advanced than the one Donald Trump’s right-hand man has in Austin, Texas; and the business partner of the main Chinese company producing electric and hybrid vehicles BYD is Warren Buffet, the “Wizard of Omaha, Nebraska”, the largest American investor, with 30% of its shares.

This is what means that in 2024 the manufacturing industry in its most advanced expression, the “new productive forces”, which are those of the 4th Industrial Revolution, will have grown 9.2% in the first 9 months of this year, which is 3 times above the nominal GDP expansion.

Hegel says that “…the 5,000 years of Chinese history are not in the past but in the present”; and that is why it is most likely that the bid with the US will be resolved in the next 10 years for a great strategic agreement on the technologies of the 4th Industrial Revolution that has a cooperative and not antagonistic character. Everything in China is loaded with history, which is the meaning of qualitative and continuous.