Perhaps because we were once on top of the world, we are unusually sensitive to where we are in the "forest of nations."
Our new seat in the World Trade Organization makes us even more attentive to how others look at us and what they say.
We rejoice over praise from outsiders. We feel hurt by any adverse remarks.
Beginning from the early 1990s, warnings of a "China threat" arose in the West. Some foreigners, surprised by the rags to riches legend of the robust Chinese economy, came to the conclusion that China had already been an economic power outreaching the country's self-claimed Third World status.
Clamors were so loud and prevalent that the country actually found itself in front of a rising threshold when it negotiated for a seat in the WTO.
For many around us, it was funny that a then quite under-developed country like ours had to assure those much richer than us that we are not a developed economy at all.
But the wind has obvious changed directions lately.
Fresh from a polemic against overseas "China-threat" prophets, our economists are now baffled by what they call "epidemic suspicion" of our economic achievements. It is all the rage in the West now to question the real strength of the Chinese economy. Our economic growth has been artificially bloated and our prosperity is fake, it is said. There even has been forecast of the pressing collapse of our economy.
"It is high time" for Chinese economists and statisticians to join hands and clarify, says a recent article by four economists in the Shanghai Securities Journal.
The article goes to great lengths to ease doubts raised by Western mainstream media and scholars.
I found their arguments strong and their reasoning convincing.
I am one of the 1.26 billion witnessing this country's speedy ascent from overall shortage to relative abundance.
Still I have the feeling that we have worried too much about outsiders' skepticism, though I also think their criticisms are grounded in some truth.
After all, we share the knowledge that local officials sometimes forge statistical data to glorify their record of merits. And they are not the only ones who inflate numbers.
Our humiliating fall from a prosperous central empire to a political and economic underdog has cultivated our desire to catch up to the West.
Our parents' generation, lived the "great leap forward" in the late 1950s, now remembered largely for outrageous exaggerations of steel and grain outputs.
I vividly remember the excitement on the faces of some domestic economists over talk of a "China century" in the early 1990s.
Thankfully, we no longer repeat such follies.
But because of the increasingly severe crackdown on statistical data manipulation, our statistics should be closer to economic realities.
If the country's recent annual gross domestic product (GDP) growth is greatly inflated, it is justifiable to conclude there was more exaggeration in previous years.
Still, the element of exaggeration is not as serious as some Westerners have claimed. Otherwise, the current economic landscape of China would exist only in a mirage.
All Chinese would endorse Primer Zhu Rongji's statement that the growth we have managed is "in real gold and silver."
Take government spending. How could it be possible for China to have invested so heavily on such a scale otherwise?
My senses, and I trust those of most of my compatriots, tell me that the experts are correct when they say our economy is promising.
We know from our past mistakes how unfit it is to talk about a "China Century." We know flaws in our systems are brewing potential threats to further progress.
We cannot ignore the fact that 30 million Chinese remain in poverty.
But China has grown fast.
That is true whether or not others like or believe it.
Instead of debating how well our economy is doing, we should spend more time thinking about how to improve people's lives.
Whatever doubts about us outsiders have, we continue to be one of the few shining spots on the world economic scene that promises the highest returns.
The continuing congregation of global transnationals on our land and steady expansion of overseas ventures of all sizes are the best proof.
(China Daily June 12, 2002)
