Is China the Leader of the Free World?

"Pursuing protectionism is just like locking oneself in a dark room. While wind and rain may be kept outside, so are light and air. No-one will emerge as a winner in a trade war". President Xi Jinping (January 2017).

The Chinese are coming. Colin Welland must have thought it would never come to this.
Xi's speech at Davos touched on a range of issues: the fact that there would be no winners from a trade war, the need for all countries to continue to support the 2015 Paris climate change accord and continued Chinese commitments to free trade. 

It seems perverse, but is China now the leader of the 'free world'?

Source: Tutor2u

Opening up of China

Three key links:

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China's Economic Growth

China's economy grew by 6.7% in 2016, compared with 6.9% a year earlier, according to official data, marking its slowest growth since 1990.

The figure is in line with Beijing's growth target of between 6.5% and 7%.
But the data comes days after the leader of one Chinese province admitted GDP data was faked for several years.
China is a key driver of the global economy and a growth slowdown is a major concern for investors around the world.

'Deception'

Some analysts have taken heart from data showing growth in the last three months of 2016 was at an annual rate of 6.8% - a slightly faster pace than the rest of the year.
But many observers have been saying for years that the country's growth was actually much weaker than the official data suggests.

And those beliefs gained more support this week, when the governor of Liaoning, Chen Qiufa, said his province had been "involved in a large-scale financial deception" between 2011 and 2014, and that economic data had been doctored. 

Addressing reporters' questions about the Liaoning admission, the director of the National Bureau of Statistics said on Friday that the national data was "truthful and reliable".
Ning Jizhe added that "statistics departments on various levels will also be strengthening the law enforcement, supervision, and checks on figures" and "resolutely guarding and preventing" the fabricating of data.

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