Thwarting China's rise is like "throwing toothpicks at a mountain" -- Australian media

BEIJING, Feb. 5 (Xinhua) -- China's "inevitable collapse" repeatedly projected by Western media never comes and thwarting China's rise is like "throwing toothpicks at a mountain," said an article published on the website of the Australian journal Pearls and Irritations.

In the article titled "China: learning from Canute," the author John Queripel argued that Western media regularly claims that China's run is near an end and that collapse is just around the corner. "So constant has this become, it is like a broken gramophone record. But the 'inevitable collapse', however, never comes."

According to the article, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) using inflation-adjusted real GDP puts the U.S. growth rate being 1.6 percent (2023) and 1 percent (2024) with the Australian economies' projected growth rates respectively being 1.8 percent and 1.4 percent.

Using another measure, purchasing power parities, consulting firm PwC has similar findings, showing China already larger than the U.S. 18.9 percent of global purchasing power parities to 15 percent, with growth rates being respectively 5.2 percent (2023), 4.4 percent (2024) and 2.3 percent (2023), 1.5 percent (2024). Australia is 1.8 percent (2023), 1.6 percent (2024).

The article also points out that in Australia, due to a whipped-up Sinophobia by politicians and media, many fear China's rise and wish to thwart it. However, thinking that Australia could do anything to stop that rise is farcical. Former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating sarcastically responded to such charging that anything Australia could do was "like throwing toothpicks at a mountain."

To employ another image used by Keating, trying to stop China's rise is like King Canute attempting to stop the rising tide, said the article.