Interview: China continues to be major engine of global growth, says U.S. scholar

Trucks transport containers at the international container terminal of Taizhou Port in Taizhou, east China's Jiangsu Province, Jan. 17, 2023. (Photo by Tang Dehong/Xinhua)

With the advantages of first class infrastructure, high quality workers and huge market, China has become "indispensable" in the world, a U.S. scholar noted.

CHICAGO, Jan. 31 (Xinhua) -- When advanced countries might suffer from deep recession, "only China is the country that will continue to be a major engine of global growth," a U.S. scholar has said.

To deal with COVID, the United States kept printing money to practice stimulus and "because of the policy, we have inflation. So the Fed is going to raise the interest rate more, and we might be slipping into a recession," Khairy Tourk, professor of economics with the Stuart School of Business at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, told Xinhua.

According to Tourk, countries in Europe also expect to have a recession because of the conflict in Ukraine and the energy crisis.

"China doesn't have this problem (of inflation). What we have here are productive workers coming back to work in factories. So they have a competitive advantage," said Tourk. "The Chinese market will be the bright spot in global growth in the next two years."

No country could match China when it comes to attracting foreign investment, especially now that China has opened up, he said.

Employees work at an assembly line of the north China base of FAW-Volkswagen in north China's Tianjin, Jan. 11, 2023. (Xinhua/Zhao Zishuo)

The country's industrial base is that it has highly productive labor force discipline, and the skills are improving over time, said Tourk. "The supply chain in China is so wide, it's a complete supply chains. It covers all kind of components from A to Z. You don't find this in any other place."

Addressing that China will have a middle class population much larger than any other country, Tourk said "Chinese market is the largest in the world, and this market is very attractive to every multinational."

With the advantages of first class infrastructure, high quality workers and huge market, China has become "indispensable" in the world, the scholar noted.

He also praised China's COVID-19 policies for not only saving millions of lives, but also a major factor behind the revival of the Chinese economy.

"You have healthy workers coming back to work in factories, healthy environment. The COVID-19 policies were the best proof that it is good to have a short-term pain for long-term gain," he said.