The US House of Representatives has voted to strip China of its status as a developing country. China has condemned the move and refuses to join the ranks of developed or “wealthy” nations. At stake are critical economic and geopolitical issues for the world’s second-largest economy.
The US House of Representatives was unanimous; the Chinese response was unanimously furious. Ironically, it was a bid by US lawmakers to raise China’s status on the official development scale that has enraged Beijing.
China has been declaring itself a major global power and adopting “great power diplomacy” over the past few years. But that’s on the geopolitical scale. When it comes to dollars and cents, the world’s second-largest economy prefers to pitch its tent, and throw its weight, at the back of the development room.
On March 27, the US Congress’s lower house unanimously approved a bill seeking to deprive China of its “developing country” status. Bill HR (House of Representatives) 1107, asking the US Secretary of State to work towards stripping the People’s Republic of China (PRC) of its “developing country” status, was passed by a resounding 415-0 vote.
The ‘PRC Is Not a Developing Country Act’ has now moved to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and is a long way from the US president signing it into law, but the reaction from China was swift.
“It represents another example of US policy aimed at containment of China,” said the China Daily, the official press organ of the Chinese Communist Party. “Faced with a rising China and the collapse of a unipolar world, centered on the US, to one which is multipolar, with China playing a major role, the United States is using every play in its book to prevent such occurring.”
Even the South China Morning Post, a more independent Hong Kong daily, warned that the House vote “will be seen by Beijing as another trick…
