Since joining the WTO in 2001, China’s role in the world has been under intense scrutiny. As China continues its unique path of development, it must strike compromises with the international community just as the international community must compromise with China.

Back in 2013, the Chinese government laid out a policy agenda that promised real reforms to an economy laden with debt and distorted by the influence of the country’s large state-owned enterprise (SOE) sector. But instead of seeing that agenda through, China chose to dodge the risks entailed by marketization, and has since reverted to what it knows best: state control over the economy and the semblance of stability that comes with it.

China’s economy is growing at is lowest rate in over 30 years, but if the country’s nearly 40 million small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) could overcome a lack of access to funding, they could become a powerful engine of economic dynamism. Can digital innovators close the SME financing gap?

A resilient China has held up well against external stresses, and the economy continues to perform well. Rural and surburban areas have the greatest potential for economic growth.

China’s economic growth is expected to have slowed to just over 6% this year, and it is unlikely to accelerate anytime soon. In fact, economic commentators generally agree that China’s economic performance in 2019 – the worst in nearly 30 years – could be the best for at least a decade. What observers can’t seem to agree on is how worried China should be, or what policymakers can do to improve growth prospects.

Further opening and reform of China’s financial sector is good news for foreign firms and even better news for China itself. Financial innovation will encourage economic growth and benefit companies and the public sector alike.

This year’s Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded to Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer for their experimental approach to poverty reduction. In the Nobel Committee’s view, the economists’ use of randomized controlled trials (RCTs), a method adapted from medical sciences, to test whether specific interventions work has “considerably improved our ability to fight global poverty.”

In the here and now of climate change, it is easy to lose sight of important signs of progress. China, the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, is a case in point. By changing its economic model, shifting its sources of fuel, developing new transportation systems, and embracing eco-friendly urbanization, China’s sustainability strategy is an example of global leadership that the rest of the world should consider very carefully. In the rush to demonize China over trade, the West has missed this point altogether.

The growing anti-China sentiment in the United States is counterproductive to the trade relationship between the two countries. Americans must understand that this bilateral trade relationship is, in fact, beneficial to both nations.

The US-China trade war has distorted a clear-eyed view of how both par-ties arrived at the current confrontation. Rather than “hegemonic” policies being pursued by China, it is more accurate to say that both sides have delayed difficult structural reforms and are now paying the price.