What Is China In A Chilean's Perspective

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he success of China is not only recent. In fact, Chinese people know how to recognize its main achievements in the history, something that could be observed, for example in the inauguration of Beijing Olympic Games in 2008, or in the Expo Shanghai, in 2010.

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ccording to the IMD Business School professor Jean-Pierre Lehmann, the rediscovering of Chinese past has been one of the most interesting phenomenon of 21st century. “There was a period of approximately 150 years during which China “lost the essence of its nationalilty. The wars, starting from the Opium War in 1838 in which China has to be submitted to the foreign cultural imperialism, affected its proud and identity” , he said.

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ehmann remembers a moment in the history of China, when Henry Kissinger met the ex Premier of the People's Republic of China Zhou Enlai in Shanghai, in 1972. Zhou commented to Kissinger that when he was a child, there was a sign in a park where it was written “entrance is not allowed to dogs and Chinese”. China was never colonized by only one power like India (by Great Britain) or Brasil (by Portugal), but it was a “Policolony”, as Sun Yat-Sen, the father of the Republic of China said. Not only big powers took a part of the Chinese pie, so did smaller countries like Belgium. When Mao proclaimed the “Liberation” of China in October 1949, during his first speech, he committed strongly that “never again China will be humiliated”. And it never happened again.

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ow China is one of the super powers in the world, and the projections for 2019 indicate that it will be the only first global power , overtaking the United States, Germany, Japan and all the countries that once humiliated it. The biggest responsible on this achievement was on Socialist than a Marxist Leninist, because he was guided by what worked. Deng's premise was “It matters not whether the cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice” .

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rom that paradigm, Deng convinced a lot of government people that some changes needed to be done, and so he started a series of reforms to open China to the global economy. “In late December 1978, China ordered three 747s from Boeing aircraft in Seattle. Also that December, Coca-Cola announced that it would be opening a plant in Shanghai. And in early 1979 China's government shifted its economic strategy to emphasize the manufacture of consumer goods for sale abroad” .

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fter that moment, China started a big time of changes, that were done gradually. A lot of Chinese young people were sent to study abroad, at governments expense. The freedom of religion was also back. To improve Chinese relationship with foreign powers and businesses, the country adopted a patent law to protect foreign patents. Exhortations about equality were out, and people could start to farm whatever they wanted. They were encouraged to make as much profit as they could and to invest in any kind of local business, and to trade as they pleased. Manufacturing companies could change economic realities according to demand, manage the prices, caring about the quality of their products, working for the industry's profit . Much of industry remained state-owned. But small-scale, privately own enterprises were allowed, as were joint ventures with foreign capitalists. China also created some diversified banking system, development of stock markets, rapid growth of the private sector, and opening to foreign trade and investment.

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everal years after Deng's main reforms, and at the end of the nineties, Chinese average economic growth was ranked the first in the world, according to statistics by the World Bank. . The country registered an average economic growth rate of 11.2 percent in the first nine years of the1990s, the highest in the world, followed by Vietnam at 8 percent and Chile at 7.8 percent.

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hina kept doing well. By 2010, China become the largest exporter in the world and overtook Japan as the globe's second largest economy and reaching an average expansion of 10% during the three decades. China became the envy of the world, and the words “miracle” and “model” were often attributed to its economy.

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ust one example: The automobile market still grows faster here than everywhere else in the world. The luxury German car brand Audi sold 29,6% more than in 2011, and got a historical record, while the sales in the world went only 11,6% up . Volkswagen sold 24,5% more than in 2011. Bentley rose 22%, while General Motors sales rose 11,9% in China .

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hina became “The world's largest auto market” in 2009, overtaking Germany. “World's biggest”, “world's most”, “world's first” are usually following China in the headlines. Just some examples: China already has “the world's largest base of Internet users, at about 300 million (almost larger than the population of the United States). Macao has overtaken “Las Vegas” as the world’s biggest gambling center in 2006, measured by total gambling revenue . “World's most populous country in the world”, “2010, The World's larger exporter” . “2012, World's biggest grocery market” , “2012: World's largest supplier of educated workers” “2012: World's biggest construction companies” . And the tendency keeps going: “China to Become the World's Largest Importer by 2014” China will become the largest consumer market in the world by 2020” . “China to be world's largest movie market by 2020”

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t all the areas, China seems to be the perfect stage for business performance, because there is a very fertile entrepreneurial environment. Because Chinese are pragmatic. They just get the things done and they do it fast. That why they are the first manufacturers. The Chinese columnist Helen H. Wang explains it like this: “In Europe, they spend all their time planning and take a very long time to act. A client recently produced an executive summary that was 200 pages long. Japan's like Europe. But in China, it's the complete opposite. I met the CIO of a Chinese insurance company, did a strategy workshop in the morning, and by the time we got to wrapping up at the end of the day, they were already asking for a proposal” .

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s a prove of that last statement, the Chinese economy would grow at 8-8.5 percent this 2013, faster than in 2012

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