CHINA will be the world’s top contributor to global growth over the next five years. This is not some idle boast from the Communist Party of China (CPC), but rather, a prediction from one of China’s most consistent critics, the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The IMF predicts that China’s growth is set to outstrip the entire Group of Seven (G7) leading industrial nations combined. Its global growth will also, according to the IMF, be 61 per cent more than the planet’s most populous nation, India.

After years of being assured that the Chinese economy was in meltdown, these so-called impartial experts have been forced to come out with the truth.

If the critics are correct, China’s economy is collapsing upwards and forwards. It appears to be the populations of the G7 capitalist countries that face a collective hard time.

It’s worth having a brief look at how we have arrived at this point. The wealth of the G7 nations has largely been created off the backs of the people of the global South. The enslavement of Africans, colonial plunder and exploitation of the people, and natural resources of the global South have made the G7 what they are today: rich, powerful and arrogant.

Much of the lifestyle we take for granted in the global North, such as mobile phones, computers, cars, planes and, of course, nuclear power and weapons, would not be possible without the forced labour of the South.

While the rich and arrogant get richer and more arrogant the global South just gets poorer. None of this is news. The great Walter Rodney wrote about all of this back in 1972 in his classic How Europe Underdeveloped Africa.

The problem is it’s never really been at the top of most political agendas to genuinely tackle this underdevelopment. Too many politicians have never seen it as being in their interests to do so.

I include the compliant African “mis” leaders, who have been content to ignore the often desperate plight of their populations. Of course, their compliance has been well rewarded with many becoming eye-wateringly rich at the expense of their countryfolk.

This was precisely why Rodney never baulked at calling on Africans to rise up and throw off the yoke of colonial rule. He was also very clear that Africans — wherever they are on the globe — must understand the role capitalism plays in their impoverishment.

These dangerous thoughts are undoubtedly why he was too dangerous to leave alive and was assassinated in 1980. We can throw around terms such as development and underdevelopment, but most people will not use fancy complicated formulas to determine their meaning.

For the vast majority of the around eight billion or so people on the planet the test will be whether are they able to scrape together a living to put bread on the table and keep a roof over their heads.

If they can’t achieve these basics they have the right to ask why not and to be supported without question in their choice of method of liberation. Armchair revolutionaries in the global North do not have the right to question how and when the oppressed choose to throw off their shackles.

China, of course, is a child of colonialism, exploitation and oppression. The British, Japanese, Russians and Germans have all at various times occupied a part of China.

I remember growing up watching news stories of mass starvation in China and deep gut-wrenching poverty. Poverty in China was at the worst levels imaginable. But, according to the World Bank, more than 850 million people in China have been lifted out of extreme poverty under the leadership of the CPC.

Poverty in China fell from a staggering 88 per cent of the population in 1981 to under 1 per cent now. That’s an extraordinary turnaround in the country and something China’s critics try really hard to avoid talking about or, at best, put down to some sort of aberration.

The Chinese know they haven’t totally cracked it: removing absolute poverty is not the same as removing all poverty. But the CPC has the ability to direct all levers of the state towards raising the living standards of the poor and has committed to doing just that.

The CPC knows that poverty, as in most countries, is most acute in rural areas. The vast land mass of China means that this is a particular challenge which makes its efforts so far nothing short of outstanding.

The fact that China has been able to develop at the speed it has is proving to be an inspiration to many nations. That’s why so many are flocking to have closer relations with China.

Many of these developing countries are more than happy for these relations to not be monogamous. They are content to also have a relationship with the US and any other nation where it suits their interests.

But sadly the US insists on a purely exclusive relationship and threatens economic sanctions against them and anyone else who trades with a country it doesn’t like.

But nevertheless China continues to attract suitors because they are not just content to remove themselves from poverty but recognise that its success as a nation is dependent on the success of others.

China believes in the interdependence of all nations. The relationships with other nations are carried out based on mutual respect and a principle of non-interference in the sovereignty of each country. How different from the relationships developed by the US over the years.

The two models of development couldn’t be clearer. The US and its posse approach development by ruthlessly exploiting other nations in the interests of US monopoly capital.

China, on the other hand, looking for win-win arrangements with global South partners so that it can continue to meet the needs and aspirations of its 1.4 billion people.

The US and its hangers-on can whinge and make threats all they like. The haters can also continue to hate. But the world has changed forever. The global South refuses to continue being just a mere extractive base for the rich nations of the North.

They also want the opportunity to develop but in their interests and not that of the US. China is not putting itself up as some kind of leader of this new world.

The days of a mega leader telling everyone else what to do are gone for good. But China is a key partner for the rest of the global South to continue the mass jailbreak from the incarceration of colonialism.