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Ramping up its export juggernaut and taking full advantage of WTO entry, China’s economy in the first decade of the new millennium was “boom with no bust.” The information revolution fed more growth, as hundreds of millions of Chinese came online. But the Internet also became a forum for discontent, and the new leadership team of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao acknowledged growing environmental and social justice concerns with their call for a more harmonious society. Then, as the credit crisis in the US spread into a global economic crisis, China’s export-dependent growth appeared in jeopardy, and fears of a Chinese crash surfaced. But, as in 1998, China weathered the storm, and emerged in 2010 as the world’s largest exporter, largest foreign creditor, and fastest growing major economy, poised to soon surpass Japan and eventually eclipse the United States as the biggest economy on the planet.

Listen to Outside Voices

Period: Overdrive (2000s)

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Videosinthisperiod

Slideup
  • WTO Was a Tool to Accelerate China's Growth

    Charlene Barshefsky

  • 2001 Marked a Change in China's Quality of Growth

    Trevor Houser

  • The Export Boom was Due to Dollar's Depreciation

    Brad Setser

  • The CCP Retains Strong Influence over the Economy

    Susan Shirk

  • Change in Leadership Causes a Change in Policy

    Li Cheng

  • China Needs to Bring The Environment Back in Sync

    Elizabeth Economy

  • This is a Great Moment Given All of That Legacy

    Robert Oxnam

  • The Olympics Was a Strange, Surreal Nightmare

    Ai Weiwei

  • The Internet Facilitates Social Mobility

    Michael Anti

  • China Needs to Innovate

    Isaac Mao

  • Listen to Outside Voices

    Rose Luqiu

  • Nobody Trusts The Chinese Government

    Mao Yushi

  • Olympic Epiphany

    Cai Guoqiang

  • Internet and Mobile Helped The Boom of Information

    Bruno Wu

  • A Blind Man Riding on The Back of Blind Tigers

    Jack Ma

  • China Has a Big Employment Problem

    Thomas Rawski

  • China's Reserves are Worthless Because They Can't Use Them

    Carl E. Walter

  • Chinese Companies React Faster

    Edward Tse

  • Generation Gaps

    David Zhang

  • It’s Not Just About Economics

    Frank Hawke

  • The Early Days of China’s Internet

    Chen Qi

  • No Dispensation from The Laws of Economics

    Stephen Roach

  • US-China Symbiosis Fed the Boom

    Federico Rampini

Slideup
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Meettheexpert

Rose Luqiu

Executive News Editor, Phoenix Satellite Television

Luwei (Rose) Luqiu, a 2007 Harvard Nieman Fellow, is an executive news editor of Hong Kong-based Phoenix Satellite Television. She is known for being fearless in her pursuit of news, often traveling into the heart of war zones. Luqiu was the first Chinese journalist to enter Baghdad in 2003 to report the war in Iraq.

Luqiu won the "Reporter of The Year" award presented by Sohu for her outstanding coverage of the Iraq war and was recognized as one of the "Most Influential Chinese women" by China Women Magazine in 2003. She was also mentioned in the Chinese edition of Forbes: "China's Top 100 Celebrity Chart" in 2004. Her blogs in Chinese can be found at the Sina and Phoenix TV Web sites.

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I think that's only part of it. A lot of people are very optimistic, as long as the economy develops to a certain level, there will naturally be more access to information, an openness, because more and more people will place hope in the acquistion of information. But I think that this is not necessarily true. Last March, at the time of the Olympic torch relay and the Carrefour incident, I discovered that young people, who were born in the 1980s, actually willingly believe some things or willingly obtain certain information. Such as, in order to prove that CNN is an anti-Chinese media body, they can naturally find a lot of examples of CNN opposing China. Or, if they want to prove that the Dalai Lama is someone who is causing division, they won't be willing to listen to the opinions of other people. This is something which initially surprised me, like the incident a year ago with Wang Qianyuan, the female Duke University student. Everyone is the same age or of the same age-group, why did so many people treat her with such violence? Why was there no one willing to listen and understand why the girl was giving such an opinion? Even though I also felt that the girl's opinions implied her lack of full understanding of the situation, but at the very least, we need some tolerance in this society. I think that young people now, their data would be much more developed than in my time. In the 1980s, when I was in college, there was no internet. You could only go see some books, and these books were also limited, not like today where there are so many books in book stores. It was also very hard for us to leave the country, it was hard for us to get out of the country and personally experience what was happening outside of China. However, sometimes I think that in fact, the college students of the 1980s seem to be more broad-minded, with a more multi-faceted way thinking and more tolerant than today's students. In the end, I think that this is a question of the method of thought. After 1989, the whole of society became secularized. Everyone was seeking true benefits in life. And a lot of people gave up their independent mode of thinking. This wasn't encouraged by schools or society. Under these circumstances, a lot of young people now may be very smart, they can go to well-known universities all over the world. However, when you really converse with them, you will discover that they are not really willing to consider new voices or adopt a more dialectical method of analyzing problems. And I think that right now, in relation to Chinese society, this is a cause of much worry today. Why do I write blogs and write so many things? I really hope that when there is so much information, one shouldn't follow the majority, but one should firstly quiet down, think by yourself, consider opinions, then make a decision. Because today's society makes decisions too quickly. Once there is a bit of information, this is immediately followed by a judgment: the situation is like this, the person is like this, just like this. And, in reality, this is not true. Because, as more information comes, you find out that the situation is nothing like this. However, there are some people who don't care that this does not reflect the real situation, and they won't listen once they have decided that this is so. They will reject outside voices. So I think that instead, since the development of the economy has gotten underway, this may become an increasingly serious problem. Because, that year, a book titled "Chinese People say No" was published. It was during the U.S bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999. A book has come out these past few days by the same people, called "The Chinese People are not Happy." I think that in "Chinese People say No", it is about how China should position itself, how to develop relations with the rest of the world. "The Chinese People Are Not Happy", what they say is how China should lead the world. Especially I think with regard to the financial crisis which made everyone think that China turned into the best place in the world, I actually meet a lot of people who think, yes, the world is now dependent upon us. And I think that a lot of the Western media intentionally say how good China is, making a lot of people think better of themselves. So sometimes I think that with regard to the voices of those outside who deliberately flatter China, including those within China who painstakingly flatter themselves, and with the impression of a flourishing economy, this causes a lot of Chinese people to be ignorant of what is really happening in China. Making them believe that China is really flourishing. So, I don't think that there is direct correlation between economic growth and the increased flow of information. Instead, I think that we must be careful of allowing this growing self-confidence to suppress the real voices from outside, especially voices of criticism or those they do not want to hear.

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Cite this Source >>
“Listen to Outside Voices | Rose Luqiu | Overdrive | The China Boom Project.”
The China Boom Project.
The Asia Society Center on US-China Relations.
1 June 2010.
Web.
09 May 2025.
<https://chinaboom.asiasociety.org/period/overdrive/0/158>.
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