At a time when the entire world is looking at a contracting economy, we get this news that China, on Monday could report a 2.1% growth in its GDP for 2020. And in 2021, it is expected to expand by 8.2%, clearly outpacing USA.

In fact, China is right on track to surpass USA as the biggest economy in the world by 2028, two years ahead of estimates gives by various economists.

Somehow, this news irks and makes one want to believe the various conspiration theories about China and the spread of the pandemic. Yet, one has to applaud the way in which China achieved tis growth. It was the first country hit by the coronavirus and one of the earliest to bring it under control thus its recovery began sooner than others. 

Call it grit and determination and the fact that it runs an authoritarian country, it just does not seem fair that the rest of the world is suffering and dying while the one who actually caused all this to happen, is today sitting pretty and ready to rule the world.

But it is not that China is out of the woods. Its export markets remain depressed and bond defaults among its PSUs does show financial stress and trouble on the horizon. Though it is dealing with this through industrial stimulus, driving its economy by concentrating on domestic demand; this too will take time. Once again, we are merely believing the numbers released by China; we really do not know the truth at all.

There is no doubt that China has exploited the current situation to its advantage. China is reveling in the fact that fear of China is now dominating the world. And maybe this fear is tactical to ensure that when Biden takes power, China, which has built up a lot of "'concessions" will be given away in return for some major "'concessions"' it wants from the "West." And in doing so, it might appear to be reasonable and people will heave a sigh of relief and recalibrate its thinking, forgetting the pandemic and lull themselves into believing that China is no so bad after all.

For China though, it is Taiwan which could be a trigger point for a major war should it become independent.

We all are responsible for where we are today and for making China what it is today. Right under our noses, we sat down and got China to make goods, allowing it to become indispensable, the factory of the world. Instead of encouraging local industry, as consumerism was stoked to the highest level ever, we fell back on China to produce cheap goods. Today, we kid ourselves when we say that we want to go local and reduce this dependence on China – that is going to take a lot of doing and many more years. Even right now, we got the virus from China and we are using equipments and goods made in China to combat the virus; masks and sanitizers are locally made but other goods continue to come from China.

Well, India and the rest of the world is engaged in a game of chess with China and we all need to strategise better, checkmate China and not vice versa!