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# The China fix
- URL: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/the-china-fix/
- Published: 2008-10-25T00:10:08.000Z
- Updated: 2019-02-14T22:59:30.000Z
- Author: Will Hutton
- Tags: #en, #Migrated, #Import 2026-04-09 19:57

With the markets crashing once more and the last rites being  
pronounced over Western capitalism, the consensus is that autumn 2008  
is when global economic power will have been seen to pass to Asia in  
general and China in particular. This is the new economic powerhouse.  
Its growth may slow a little while the West flounders, but it will  
emerge from this recession as the world's centre of economic and  
financial gravity. Goodbye, USA. Hello, the Chinese Communist party.

It  
is fashionable foolishness that ignores some brute realities. The first  
is that Asia, except Japan, remains in essence a subcontractor to the  
West. Two-thirds of China's exports, for example, are made by foreign  
companies who essentially reprocess imports of semi-manufactured goods  
that are then shipped to Europe and the US. It is an economy that does  
not innovate - it is the great copier and counterfeiter of Western  
technology. This may change over the next 200 years, but not during the  
lifetime of most of the people reading this column.

(To read on, click [here](http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/oct/26/china-global-economy?commentpage=1&ref=opendemocracy.net)...)

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Will Hutton is chief executive of the [Work Foundation](http://www.theworkfoundation.com/?ref=opendemocracy.net). He writes a weekly [column](http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/willhutton?ref=opendemocracy.net) in the *Observer*. His books include [*The World We’re In*](http://www.littlebrown.co.uk/Title/9780316860819?ref=opendemocracy.net)(Little, Brown, 2002), [*A Declaration of Interdependence: Why America Should Join the World*](http://www.wwnorton.com/catalog/spring04/032560.htm?ref=opendemocracy.net)(WW Norton, 2003), and [*The Writing on the Wall: China and the West in the 21st Century*](http://www.littlebrown.co.uk/Title/9780349118826?ref=opendemocracy.net) (Little, Brown, 2008)