Developing countries gain inspiration from China's history of bold decision-making based on its own situation and resources, said a Philippine expert at the Global South Think Tanks Forum in Beijing on Wednesday.
The event attracted political figures, government representatives, analysts, scholars and journalists from 76 countries and regions worldwide.
When asked to comment on China's role in the Global South and developing countries, Anna Rosario Malindog-Uy, Vice President of Asian Century Philippines Strategic Studies Institute, stressed that learning from the Chinese experience is a notion far more profound than simply emulating the policies of a single country.
"If you really look at China, it developed its economy, and everything is indigenous. It capitalizes on its own domestic strength as a country and its growth and opening up. There are such things in China -- modernization, opening up, and reforms. If you really study the economic development in China 40 years ago until now, it's based on its own historical background, its comparative advantage, and the resilience and hard work of the Chinese people. This is the foundation of why China is China today -- the [second-largest] economy, and even number one in many respects. I think that is an inspiration to the whole Global South and Global South countries, precisely because this is the kind of things we need to adopt -- not necessarily copying China in everything that it does, but I think we need to learn how to develop our own economy based on our own resources and historical underpinnings, and then pursue our own development that what we think is right for us, define the destiny of our own countries based on what we think is right, but not on the dictates of other countries," she said.
China's 'indigenous' development offers inspiration for Global South: Philippine expert
