Western commentary often dwells on China’s problems while overlooking the cultural and historical foundations of its extraordinary achievements. Understanding both is essential to informed judgement.

China currently faces a range of significant challenges – youth unemployment, the real estate market and an ageing population are some of the most pressing. One of the challenges that is less spoken of is how China struggles to understand and explain its extraordinary success over the last 50 years.

The challenges that China faces are widely reported in Western media, and there are an array of pundits who make a decent living raising and discussing these issues. Gordon G Chang, author of _The Coming Collapse of China_, is a regular guest on Fox News and the like. In that fine volume released in 2001, he predicted the fall of the Chinese Communist Party by the end of 2011. When 2011 came to an end, he wrote in Foreign Policy magazine that “Instead of 2011, the mighty Communist Party of China will fall in 2012. Bet on it.”

It is unclear whether Chang invested any of his own money on this wager or if he simply gives bad betting advice to others.

This is not to say that some of the issues that Chang and his ilk refer to are unimportant. Since Covid, the economy has slowed significantly and, aiding and abetting this, the Chinese consumer has become cautious. This, in turn, has been made worse by a fall in real estate prices, meaning that some people who have bought property now owe more than their property is worth. While similar or different problems are reported in the West, the difference is that elements of Western media look to stitch downturns in China into a narrative that suggests fin de dynastie is a realistic possibility.

While the challenges cited are often real and significant, China’s extraordinary achievements might also form a narrative. While much attention has recently focused on DeepSeek and BYD, China’s ‘healthy life expectancy’ now exceeds that of the US, with total life expectancy projected by the WHO to overtake the US in 2027.

This comes while China spends approximately USD $8,000 per head on healthcare, as opposed to the USD $48,000 that the US spends. More frequently reported is the lifting of 800 million people out of extreme poverty over the last 40 years. In terms of scale and speed, there is no comparison in history. Interestingly, the two countries that come closest – Japan and Korea – are heavily influenced by Confucian culture, with its emphasis on education, ‘family values’, respect for social order and strong traditions of meritocratic bureaucracy.

And perhaps here is the way that China might sew together a narrative that explains its success and can be of interest and benefit to us all. That narrative would suggest that culture is as important as, if not more important than, political systems. This would involve explaining and understanding that much of Chinese philosophy emerged during the Warring States Period, a time of great chaos. As a result, stability is a core value. The traditions that China developed during this time – Confucianism, Taoism and Legalism in particular – all seek ways to ensure a stable state and social system, thereby creating the conditions under which people may prosper.

While there is much that we may glean from these schools of thought, this is not to say these ideas should be adopted wholesale by cultures with very different histories and traditions. Implicit in this understanding of China’s extraordinary successes is the notion that each country should develop according to its own history and be aware of its own culture.

China would undoubtedly benefit from a compelling narrative that better explained its successes. It matters because narratives shape expectations, foreign-policy judgements and investment decisions.

For Australia and other Western countries, understanding China’s successes is just as important as understanding its challenges — both shape the region we operate in and the world we live in. Considering Aristotle warned that in a democracy demagogues could use their skills in rhetoric to gain favour among the people and undermine the rule of law, we in the West might also benefit from being aware of the origins, strengths and weaknesses of our own culture and political systems.