China's changes continue to dazzle Western world

Humphrey Hawksley says over the years China has achieved tremendous economic growth. Monica Wyithe / For China Daily

Country is achieving growth in its own way, says BBC correspondent

People in the West still have not "got their heads around" the astonishing changes in China over the past 20 years, a leading BBC foreign correspondent says.

"The difference between China (then and now), in my view, is quite confusing to the West," says Humphrey Hawksley, who set up the BBC's bureau in Beijing in 1994.

Claim of China's economic supremacy greeted with doubt

Top 10 regions with highest GDP in China

Nevertheless, the "image of China in the Western eye has shifted in recent years from a mysterious developing country to an economic power closely intertwined with the global economy", he says.

Hawksley recalls his early days of reporting in China when it was difficult to get editors interested in stories that were not linked to the West's criticism of the country's lack of Western-style democracy.

But over the years China has achieved tremendous economic growth, brought a large proportion of its population out of poverty and shown the world that those things can be achieved without Western-style democracy. China is "winning the game", he says.

By that he means that for other emerging economies China has presented an alternative model of achieving economic growth, which is often the thing they are looking for.

"In my travels around the world, in the poorest parts of Africa or Latin America, people want their children to be safe, they want a clinic to be nearby, they want a road. They don't want 'isms', which are all mechanisms to deliver those things."

Though China's economic success is amazing, he says, he is not entirely surprised, having got to know some of the country's political leaders in the 1990s.

One memorable figure for him is Zhu Rongji, who served as mayor of Shanghai between 1987 and 1991, during which time Hawksley interviewed him.