China’s Economic Development during Covid - An overview of how China attains economic growth

Remember the good old days, when news channels used to announce another new end of the world each time. The usual bluff. This time we don't have the luxury to brush it off. After the stranger than fiction events of the last year, we thought the worse is behind us. Little did we know, that humanity's oldest enemy returns in the form of a second wave. 
 
Once again, the world is plunging into an apocalypse. The resources are dying, both human and human-made. Since last year, the global economy is in acute danger.  Coronavirus pandemic has caused a great economic crisis in the world which has resulted in stagnation in any consumer activities. Almost all countries were in depression or recession by September 2020 because of the large-scale worldwide population lockdowns.
 
Because of the dire situations, there was a severe drop in the prices of oil and most of the prominent industries like energy, hospitality, transportation & tourism crashed. Even the international superpower, United States, succumbed to the clenches of Covid-19 and the majority of the Americans lost their employment and health insurance. A 3.5 per cent steep decline in its GDP figure for 2020 was reported by the US which is considered as the worst in years after World War II.
 
For 2021, economists have predicted very slow growth for the country in recovery. Each nation has a unique speed and scheme of combating the Covid crisis. As it happens, China, which ranks after the US as the highest GDP contributor, has had an exceptionally outstanding growth graph bypassing all its competitors who were struggling to get their home affairs together in late 2020.
 
In last year October, China reported an increase of 4.9 per cent in its GDP for the year’s third quarter. International Monetary Fund (IMF) announced China as the only democracy expected to grow in 2020, and so it did. China was the only country that came out strong from the aftershocks of the 1st wave of Covid with a 2.3 per cent growth in its economy. At the starting quarter of this year, China recorded a differential increase of 18.3 per cent as compared to its growth in the same quarter last year, marking it as the largest ever growth achieved by the country in any quarter since 1992.
 
The Centre for Business and Economic Research (CBER) estimated China’s economy in terms of GDP to transcend the US economy by the end of 2028. IMF’s new predictions say that China will account for a 1/5th increase in global GDP in the forthcoming five years. One of the reasons for China’s booming economy during these times can be the leaders’ labour-intensive approach.
In some last decades, China has made its mark as one of the most prominent international leader and contributor to the global market. The country runs on a unique mix of decentralized system and communist ideology which makes it okay for the authorities to exploit human resources. 
 
‘Reform through Labour’ is the motto of the authoritarian regime which exercises state-sanctioned force labour of men, women and children. Across China, there is a web of concentrated labour camps which are popularly known as Laogai. Prisoners of these camps are worked to produce cheap quality goods which find their way into the global market. This is what is reported as been happening in the Xinjiang region against the Uighur Muslims where the inmates are forced to work in the detention camps.

The government also authorizes juvenile work camps through its policy ‘Reeducation through Labour’ where school-aged children put to work. In 2001, more than 40 school children who were obligated to assemble fireworks, were killed in an explosion. Students are also made to do unskilled manual labour in factories in the name of ‘job training’. Through school-company partnerships, students are forced to undertake compulsory internships in the electronics supply chain.
Decentralization of authority and lack of accountability in China promotes economic growth but at the cost of exploitation of vulnerable citizens.

Besides, China has the most ‘engine room population’ which can intensify the efforts of the government in achieving its development goals through labour intrinsic policies.
Although Chinese leaders boasted about their achievement of swift economic recovery from Covid, the youth of the nation expressed their concern over social media that the current situation of the economy of China is a classic example of when the country keeps getting richer and the citizens keep getting poorer.

The leaders of China’s Communist Party wish to gain a globally favourable image of a country that defeated Covid but as per economists the current figure of China’s recovery portrays a shallow view as this growth is the result is heavy expending of infrastructure projects and brute investment in the dirty industries. Since China has never been open to scrutiny, it is hard to say what actual growth the country has achieved at the ground level.