China's greatest competitive strengths heading into 2035 are stability, openness and resilience, according to Wang Wen, dean of the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies at Renmin University of China. These are qualities, Wang says, that set China apart from every other major economy.

In this episode of "Diplomacy Talk," Wang explains how years of consistent policy, an unbroken industrial base and a vast consumer market have compounded into an enduring structural advantage — one he says no external pressure can reverse.

Following is the transcript of the interview.

Diplomacy Talk: You've just launched a new book, "New Strategic Opportunities: China and the World Toward 2035." You repeatedly mention in your book that China still faces new strategic opportunities. Yet many ordinary people feel that the world is becoming increasingly turbulent and that China is under growing pressure. So why is there such a gap between this macro-level assessment and the grassroots public perception?

Wang Wen: China's economy has shifted from high-speed growth to medium-to-high-speed growth, and from an emphasis on growth rates to a focus on high-quality development. This national transformation requires each of us to undergo a similar shift in personal mindset.

In the past, we always wanted to accumulate as much wealth as possible. Now, money is of course still important, but we also need development across multiple dimensions: a healthy body, a more comfortable life, a better environment, and cleaner air and water. For every individual, money is no longer the sole measure of a good life.

Diplomacy Talk: In your book, you also mention that the more disruptive the Trump administration becomes, the more new strategic opportunities China will have. Some might find that counterintuitive. What is the logic behind your assessment?

Wang Wen: Trump stirring up trouble certainly creates greater strategic opportunities for China.

Diplomacy Talk: But what if China is the target of his disruptions?

Wang Wen: First, Trump's disruptions cannot target China alone. The more trouble he creates, the more problems he runs into globally — and that actually opens up more strategic space for China's development. The more he stirs things up, especially when he goes after China's technology sector and tries to suppress its development, the more China recognizes the importance of independent innovation.

For many years, much of China's public discourse bought into the free trade theory, believing that in a globalized world, any technology could simply be purchased. Why should we invest so much effort in original innovation then?

However, Trump has genuinely convinced China's tech and business communities that independent innovation matters most. As the saying goes, "It's better to stand on your own feet than someone else's." No matter how advanced other countries are technologically, it is better to invest in your own independent R&D and develop your own core technologies.

Second, Trump's disruptions have also made us realize that even after so many years of international development, the world has still not moved beyond the brutal law of the jungle. Look at how the U.S. assassinated Iran's leader, its support for Israel's "massacres" in Gaza, the arbitrary arrest and abduction of a nation's leader, and the reckless imposition of tariffs on other countries. This troublemaking has continuously pushed the international community toward chaos and war.

The data show that the number of armed conflicts worldwide kept rising in 2023, 2024 and 2025, repeatedly setting post-World War II records. What does this tell us? We are not living in a peaceful era; we are merely living in a peaceful country.

Against this backdrop, we see more clearly than ever how precious peace is, and how vital it is for a country to be strong. Without a strong nation, there is no safety for the individual. So from this angle, the more Trump stirs things up, the more opportunities China gains.

Externally, China is gaining more partners internationally. Internally, the country grows more united, its people more resilient, its technological development more self-reliant and its economic growth more sustainable.

Diplomacy Talk: Regarding China-U.S. competition, you've said that time is on China's side. Where does that confidence come from? Is it China's industrial capacity, institutional resilience, market size or something else?

Wang Wen: My view that time is on China's side in the China-U.S. competition is not a recent one. I've held it for the past decade. And the intensifying competition over the past 10 years has only confirmed that China has the greatest staying power.

First, from a policy perspective, China's policies are the most predictable among all major economies. Over the past two decades, U.S. policies keep reversing course with every presidential term. One president does one thing for four years, then the next flips it back. They keep stirring up trouble, taking one step forward and two steps back. China's policy, by contrast, is highly consistent. I often tell my foreign friends, "If you want to understand China, just look at our five-year plans."

Second, from an industrial perspective, China has the most complete industrial base in the world. There is almost nothing the world can conceive of that China cannot build. Most of the current bottleneck technologies have either already been solved by China or will be solved in the near future. With that foundation, what is there to worry about?

Third, from a talent perspective, China produces around 5 million STEM graduates each year, generating a vast pool of engineers and successive generations of great Chinese scientists and entrepreneurs.

Diplomacy Talk: But even with all that, you still devoted an entire chapter in your book to addressing the so-called "Peak China" theory. Why has this argument kept resurfacing in recent years? Is it a misjudgment from the outside world, or does it reflect that China's economy has genuinely entered a new stage of development?

Wang Wen: Rather than saying China's economy has peaked, I think it's more accurate to say it is undergoing a transformation. The so-called "Peak China" theory rests on the fact that China's growth rate declined from the high-speed range of 10%, 9%, 8% and 7% to the current medium-to-high speed of around 5%. Some Western economists and think tank experts seized on that relative slowdown and hyped the theory up.

But in the five or six years since that theory emerged, China's economy has not peaked at all. Our 5G network has now been rolled out across almost the entire country. In robotics, the past two or three years have seen a sweeping leap forward, surpassing the rest of the world in application. China leads the world in both the application scenarios and market potential of large language models. New energy vehicles from China now account for roughly 70% of the global market. And over the past five or six years, our car exports overtook South Korea, then the U.S., then Germany and finally Japan, making China the world's largest auto exporter.

It is precisely during these past five or six years, when the so-called "Peak China" theory was at its loudest, that China achieved major breakthroughs in technology, overall economic scale and quality. So I find the theory utterly absurd. I have spoken with many experts I know who used to argue for it. They now regret it. Some have even emailed me saying they want to come to China for a tour and revisit their views.

Diplomacy Talk: Let's turn to China-U.S. tech competition. Facing chip blockades and technological barriers, China certainly needs to strengthen its independent R&D. But that raises another question: How do you avoid the risk that the more you emphasize self-reliance, the more you risk falling into isolation? Where should that line be drawn?

Wang Wen: Self-reliance does not mean closing the door. In my view, there are at least a few key boundaries to keep in mind.

The first is the security boundary. A country must independently develop nearly all of its core technologies to maintain basic national security. In the past, China tightened its belt to develop the atomic bomb. Today, the drive to break through in chips and core industrial internet technologies is aimed at safeguarding technological security and, through that, the bottom line of overall national security.

The second is whether you can sustainably drive high-quality economic development. Many countries have fallen into a stagnation trap after reaching a certain level of development precisely because they lacked self-reliance. Japan and Europe, for example, faced constraints in certain technological areas or aspects of development. Once they reached a certain level, they were suppressed by the superpower and stalled.

A truly major country must therefore have the capacity for autonomy across all dimensions — not only sovereign independence, but technological and economic self-reliance as well. The more self-reliant China's economy and technology become, the stronger foundation its high-level opening-up will have, and the more sustainable and secure its development will be.

Diplomacy Talk: We touched on China's long-term advantages earlier. In your book, you use a term to capture this long-term accumulation: "major country compound interest." How should we understand that concept?

Wang Wen: "Major country compound interest" refers to the compounding gains that sustained development and stable policies have produced over time. Over the past three to four decades, China, unlike many of the other major economies, has not fought or been drawn into an external war. It has not experienced a large-scale financial crisis, nor has it seen mass ethnic unrest or a large influx of refugees. It has not suffered serious social conflict and has not gone through major economic or industrial crises.

This is precisely why China has sustained its compounding development. The three most important rules for making money are: do not lose money, do not lose money, and do not lose money. The three basic rules of national development are: do not regress, do not regress, and do not regress, meaning that national development should never allow regression.

Over the past three to four decades, our policies, our society and our institutions have shown a steady overall trend of improvement. That is what produces the compound interest of a major country. So "major country compound interest" essentially comes down to maintaining policy continuity, social stability and sustainable development that continues to generate dividends.

Diplomacy Talk: If we extend the timeframe to 2035, what will China's true competitive edge be? If you had to sum it up in three keywords, what would they be?

Wang Wen: If I had to name three, the first would be stability. China is the most stable major economy in the world. Our policies, society and domestic and foreign relations have remained broadly stable. That is our greatest competitive strength. Stability is a scarce asset in today's world.

The second is openness. Many developed economies are becoming increasingly closed, adopting conservative and protectionist measures. China, by contrast, uses openness to counter protectionism.

The third is resilience. China has, I believe, the strongest resilience among major economies. Its vast industrial base, large consumer market, extensive infrastructure and the sheer scale of the overall economy all give China the strength and confidence to weather risks from any direction.

Diplomacy Talk: What is China's biggest challenge? Is it the outside world, or its own transformation?

Wang Wen: I don't think any external force is capable of containing China's development. In the past, we worried somewhat about whether the U.S. would move to comprehensively contain China. But the U.S. struggles even to deal with Iran. How could it handle China? Looking back now, what China really needs to worry about is not external pressure but its own transformation — aging demographics, how to stimulate consumption and so on.

Diplomacy Talk: I have two final quick questions. What is the gravest strategic miscalculation China should avoid? And which risk is China most likely to underestimate?

Wang Wen: On the external side, we should avoid misjudging our biggest competitor, the U.S. Although we are confident that the U.S. cannot contain China's continued rise, it does have the capacity to create difficulties for China's rise. We must not underestimate America's capacity to create complications. Nor should we simply equate "U.S. decline" with "U.S. collapse."

America's power is in relative decline, but the U.S. has not collapsed. Despite the difficulties it runs into, it remains the world's most powerful country by overall national strength. For the foreseeable future, even five or 10 years from now, I believe the U.S. will still be the world's strongest country. We cannot afford a strategic misjudgment on that point.

The most easily underestimated risk is demographic aging. Although the entire world faces aging-related challenges, and although many voices are already sounding the alarm, our policy response still falls far short of what the risks actually demand. The drag on consumption that comes with an aging population, and the growing difficulty of stimulating it, are issues that deserve far more attention.

Many scholars have pointed out that a couple needs to have two children just to keep the population stable. We are still well below that level. There is significant room for policy improvement, both in encouraging higher birth rates and in better protecting women's reproductive rights and childbirth-related rights.

There is another risk we must not underestimate: artificial intelligence. Within the next three to five years, AI may displace a large number of job categories. How we find and create new employment for the workers displaced by AI is a pressing challenge that demands vigilance now.

Presenter: Xu Rong

Production supervisor: Li Xiaohua

Co-production supervisor: Zhang Liying

Executive producer: Zhang Ruomeng

Editors: Zhang Heling, Jiao Yuan, Lyu Yiyi, Xia Fangting

Produced by chinadiplomacy.org.cn