Special report: 30 Years of Reform & Opening Up
　
     BRUSSELS, Oct. 26 (Xinhua) -- It is a great achievement for China to maintain overall stability in a vast country while booking a fast economic growth in the past three decades, a senior Dutch researcher on China told Xinhua in a recent interview.

    With its growing economic strength, China is making considerable contributions to world prosperity and peace, said Willem van Kemenade, senior visiting fellow at the Netherlands Clingendael Institute for International Relations.

    China, with its GDP ranking fourth now in the world, is destined to be a major player in the world. It has to adjust its policy of "lying low and biding its time" and assume bigger responsibility, said the Dutch consultant, who authored three books on China and published numerous articles about China's relations with the rest of the world.

    TURNING POINT

    Van Kemenade worked as a journalist between 1977 and 1997 based in Hong Kong, Taipei and Beijing. When he first set foot on China in 1975, he was struck by the sight of millions of "blue ants" -- people dressed in dull, blue coats -- who were busy chanting hollow slogans, paying scant attention to the economy.

    "I thought this can not go on. So did many Western people like me, " he said.

    When China set in motion the process of reform and opening-up in 1978, van Kemenade sensed this was going to be the start of a brand new chapter of China and the world's most populous country was on its way to becoming a major player in the world.

    The process of economic reform was what the Chinese call "a tortuous path", punctuated by setbacks here and there, but China has managed to stay on the course and pulled off economic miracles, said van Kemenade.

    Even an inland city like Chengdu, where you hardly spot any high- rise buildings 20 years ago, is now "a big, ultra-modern metropolis " with office towers everywhere, he said.

    "If you see the pictures of Chongqing (a city not far from Chengdu), it looks like New York, but in a much more modern version," he added.

    "Compared with other big developing countries, such as India, China has been doing extremely well," the Dutch expert concluded.

    An important reason for that is that the Chinese government has succeeded in energizing the population, he said, noting that the majority of the Chinese people are convinced that economic advancement is key to realizing the national goal of becoming a great nation again.

    An equally important factor is China's ability to keep the country stable. "It has been a big achievement for China to maintain national unity and keep the general situation stable nationwide," van Kemenade said.

    "A Chinese slogan says: 'Wending yadao yiqie (Stability is of paramount importance).' I absolutely agree with that," he said.

    GOING IT CHINESE WAY

    The fact that China has achieved economic success without following the Western development models has earned China respect in many developing countries, van Kemenade said.

    The so-called Washington Consensus, the policy programs prescribed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank for developing countries, call for liberalization of trade and investment, privatization of state enterprises and deregulation. But China has rejected them and found its own way of developing economy, he said.

    China took a cautious approach in economic reforms, opening its market step by step, using indigenous resources in the first place and sticking to government regulation. While the Washington Consensus proved to be no cure-all for developing countries' woes, the so-called Beijing Consensus has aroused great interest in the Third World, van Kemenade said.

    "The Western model of development has failed in Africa, maybe the Chinese model will be more successful there," the Dutch analyst said.

    China's prudence was partially vindicated when it suffered relatively less from the fallout of the 1997 Asian financial crisis and again in the current financial crisis, he said, noting that those countries, which opened their capital markets completely, suffered big blows.

    NOT YET PERFECT

    However, the economic development is still falling short in some areas. China needs to reduce its dependence on exports as the driving force of its economy, van Kemenade said.

    He said it was smart for China in the late 1980s and 1990s to follow the model of some East Asian economies and make it a priority to increase exports. But for a country so vast as China, export-led growth is only a temporary solution.

    In the past decades, Western multinationals have used China as an industrial workshop and the explosive growth in exports to America and Europe resulted in huge trade surpluses for China.

    "The money was then lent to the United States to encourage its high-risk, irresponsible fiscal and monetary policy, and to finance its wars," he said.

    In his opinion, the living standards in China could have risen much more if China had used more of its foreign currency reserves for domestic development, particularly in the western inland areas.

    China needs to shift its focus from exports to domestic consumption because the world economy can't continue to absorb Chinese exports in such a big way, the Dutch expert argued.

    China and the United States started strategic economic dialogue in 2006, partly to address the massive trade imbalance, he said, adding that the same mechanism has been set up with the European Union this year.

　 CONTRIBUTION TO WORLD PEACE, PROSPERITY

    The rise of China has generated talks of "China threat" in the West, but van Kemenade believes China has made considerable contributions to world prosperity and peace.

    Van Kemenade said China through its economic development has benefited the world economy. "China is a big manufacturing center and it has contributed reasonably good quality products to many parts of the world," he said.

    While there have been some problems with food products and toys in recent years, "China in general is contributing a lot to the economic well-being of the world as a whole," he said.

    Cheap Chinese products also helped to keep the inflation down and improve the living standard in many parts of the world. "China is making a positive contribution to the maintenance of prosperity even in Western countries," he said.

    Speaking of the rise of protectionism in Europe and America, van Kemenade said it is unfair to accuse China of stealing Western jobs. "It is the big corporations which have brought the jobs to China."

    On the impact of China's rise on world peace, van Kemenade said he does not think China has real ambitions to become a global military superpower. On the contrary, China is playing a relatively "constructive role" in maintaining world peace.

    China's hosting of the six-party talks on the Korean Peninsular nuclear issue, for instance, is a major contribution to Asian regional security as well as to world peace, van Kemenade said.

    He commended China for actively participating in United Nations peacekeeping missions, sending troops to many crisis areas in the world.

    In the Balkans, the Middle East and the recent Georgia crisis, China has been advocating finding solutions through peaceful means, he said.