A commentary published by the Greek financial news site Capital.gr on Tuesday traced how China transformed itself from an impoverished manufacturing base in the early 1980s into a rival economic and technological power, arguing that purchasing-power-parity GDP calculations showed the Chinese economy overtaking the United States within less than 15 years of Beijing's 2001 entry into the World Trade Organization.
The piece, written by Capital.gr columnist Agis Veroutis, said China entered the era of globalization as a factory for other countries' products, but used that manufacturing base to build its own companies, acquire its own technology and eventually claim its own share of the global economic system.
From poverty to special economic zones
According to the column, China in the early 1980s had roughly one billion people, widespread poverty, a per capita income of around $200 and fewer than one in five residents living in cities. Leader Deng Xiaoping gradually opened the economy, allowed foreign capital and joint ventures, and established Special Economic Zones, with the city of Shenzhen becoming a laboratory for a system combining capitalism in the factory with Communist Party control at the top, Veroutis wrote.
The Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989 was, in the columnist's account, a bloody reminder that Beijing had not adopted Western assumptions that economic liberalization would bring political liberalization. Economic reforms resumed within a few years.
WTO entry and the 2008 financial crisis
China's accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001 was, according to the column, the country's biggest breakthrough. Western companies believed they were merely outsourcing production while keeping research and development, patents and brands for themselves. Instead, Veroutis argued, they exported engineers, suppliers, machinery, quality systems, logistics and decades of production knowledge, amounting to what he called the largest industrial apprenticeship programme in history.
The column pointed to the 2008 global financial crisis as a further lesson for Beijing, as Wall Street was rescued with state money and central banks printed trillions of dollars while Western advocates of free-market capitalism turned to state intervention. China subsequently poured money into roads, railways, ports, industry and cities.
Xi Jinping era and demographic strain
Under President Xi Jinping, China launched the Made in China 2025 industrial plan and the Belt and Road infrastructure initiative, while its electric vehicle, battery, solar panel, telecommunications and artificial intelligence industries accelerated, the column said.
Veroutis noted one problem Beijing cannot manufacture: more than three decades of the one-child policy have left China with a shrinking, rapidly ageing population and roughly 29 million more men than women. He wrote that younger Chinese appear less willing to work to exhaustion for a future reward, pointing to the phenomenon known as "tang ping," or "lying flat," as a sign that many young people have embraced opting out of the system's pressures.
Energy needs and Washington's export controls
China is now the world's largest importer of crude oil, with about seven in ten barrels it needs coming from abroad, the column said, a vulnerability for a country whose main energy routes pass through seas patrolled largely by the US navy. That, Veroutis argued, is part of why electric vehicles, batteries, solar power, nuclear energy, Russian pipelines and long-term energy contracts have become more strategically significant for Beijing.
The United States has also imposed restrictions on advanced artificial intelligence chips, semiconductor manufacturing equipment and other critical technologies, according to the column, moves it said Beijing answered by accelerating efforts to build the same capabilities domestically.
Yuan, gold and the BRICS bloc
The column said China still holds hundreds of billions of dollars in US government bonds, though far less than in previous years, while buying gold, promoting greater use of the yuan in its trade and developing its own international interbank payment system, known as CIPS.
Veroutis described the BRICS grouping, which includes China, Russia and India among others, as not a "Chinese NATO," noting that India would resist any such framing, but as a table at which the United States neither sits at the head nor decides who else is seated.
Russia's growing dependence and Europe's exposure
The column also examined Russia, which it said has nuclear weapons, energy resources, raw materials and vast territory, but has become far more dependent on Chinese markets, electronics and financing than China is on Russia since being largely cut off from the West. Veroutis wrote that if this trend continues for another decade, the word "satellisation" may start to sound less exaggerated when describing Moscow's position relative to Beijing.
Turning to Europe, the column said the continent sought to reduce its reliance on Russian natural gas but ended up dependent on China instead, since nearly all the solar panels the European Union imports from outside the bloc come from China, along with a critical share of the permanent magnets and raw materials needed by Europe's green industry.
Greece's ties to both Beijing and Washington
The column pointed to Greece as a local example of these dynamics. Greece's largest port, Piraeus, is controlled by the Chinese state shipping group COSCO, while its second-largest port is controlled by a former Russian oligarch of Greek descent, Veroutis wrote. He added that Greek shipowners build much of their new fleet at Chinese shipyards, distribute Russian oil around the world with US approval, and rely mainly on Chinese factories for the solar panels intended to deliver the country's energy independence.
At the same time, Greece remains a member of the eurozone, the European Union and NATO, and continues to receive investment from both China and the United States, according to the column. It cited COSCO's presence in Piraeus alongside American capital invested in the port of Alexandroupoli, linked to the Vertical Corridor project, and in the Elefsina Shipyards, while Greek shipping firms continue to do business with whoever offers cargo, freight and a capable shipyard.
Veroutis concluded that a day may come when it becomes necessary to judge which of the two sets of investments was the wrong bet, though he added that it is also possible that day never arrives.
