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This column is the first in a two-part series analysing the growth model and story of China’s dramatic economic rise and the lessons to learn and unlearn from it, while contesting the recent debate on whether China shortchanged its domestic workers and consumers to meet globalist aspirations.

A month before the Trump-Xi meet in Beijing, China’s National People’s Congress approved the country’s 15th Five Year Plan, which is Xi’s third such plan as president. This plan prioritises “high-quality” economic development – approximating a “Xi doctrine” – in which China is no longer viewed as a developing nation but a developed one. For a nation to transition from one status to another while rapidly industrialising presents China as one of the most fascinating growth models to study and learn from.

China’s economic rise has long carried a certain fascination for global policymakers, especially in the developing world. Few countries in modern economic history have industrialised as rapidly – over just a few decades – or reduced absolute poverty at such scale. China did so while enhancing productive capacity by enabling a dramatic transition of its workforce across sectors within the span of a single generation.

For many economists, China became proof that sustained state-led industrialisation could deliver material progress on a historic scale. In the last roughly ten years, India has also seemingly focused on using public investment as a strategy to crowd in private investment, domestically and internationally. However, it has had achieved more modest outcomes than China could. Therefore, there are useful lessons to be learnt from the China story and, despite its rise as a global power, also lessons to unlearn.

China’s record on poverty reduction is not seriously in dispute. Between 1996 and 2022, consumption expenditure per capita grew by 8% annually on average in the........

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