China's economic struggles
China's economic strugglesiStock
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“The pandemic? Which pandemic?

If 2021 unfolds as economists predict, China will have weathered the crisis smoothly. Its gross domestic product is expected to reach, at the end of the year, the level that Western analysts had anticipated in their forecasts drawn up at the end of 2019, before the start of Covid-19. With one difference, however: instead of having experienced, in 2020 and 2021, two years marked by a growth of 5 percent [each], the Asian giant should record an increase in GDP of about 2 percent in 2020, but followed by a rebound, an exceptional 8 percent”. These are the first lines of an article by Le Monde.

No other G20 country will do so well. More than ever, China is the engine of the global economy. In the next few years, China will thus pass from the status of a developing country to a developed country. China's GDP will reach that of the United States by 2028.

Last November, while in the West there was only talk of Covid (Trump’s “Covid Covid Covid”), China gathered fifteen economies in Asia-Pacific for the largest free trade pact in the world that excludes United States. It represents 30 percent of the world economy.

In foreign policy, 2020 was an extraordinary year for the Chinese Communist Party. Epicenter of the pandemic, Beijing has successfully censored and covered up the origins of the virus and its very serious responsibilities in managing the epidemic.

Donald Trump, the first American president to have tried to stand up to Beijing after years of failed commercial and political internationalism, will return to golf in ten days and we will soon see if Joe Biden will have the courage and the desire to continue on the path of economic and political confrontation with Beijing.

The Hong Kong enclave, which after the departure of the British, had enjoyed a special status of political and civil liberty, was definitively crushed by China without suffering repercussions. The only remaining hotbed of Chinese nationalism, Xinjiang, is now subject to an experiment in demographic genocide and "re-education" in concentration camps, without even the Islamic countries of Fiat (they are more interested in the new "Silk Road").

The European Union, which is heading towards 2021 while still struggling with the pandemic, only wants to pity Chinese investments. The Vatican renewed its agreement with the Chinese regime, thus guaranteeing it a blank check on religious freedom, which Beijing has littered.

All dissent within China has been wiped out, leading to the "disappearance" of billionaires once close to the regime such as Jack Ma and Ren Zhiqiang.

Chinese Emperor Xi Jinping* smiles happily at the start of 2021.

(*commonly known as President of the People's Republic of China)

Giulio Meotti is, an Italian journalist with Il Foglio, writes a twice-weekly column for Arutz Sheva. He is the author, in English, of the book "A New Shoah", that researched the personal stories of Israel's terror victims, published by Encounter and of "J'Accuse: the Vatican Against Israel" published by Mantua Books, in addition to books in Italian. His writing has appeared in publications, such as the Wall Street Journal, Gatestone, Frontpage and Commentary.