By John Ross    Source: Global Times    Published: 2016-10-12

One effect of the unfolding of the international financial crisis since 2008 has been a beginning of an understanding of China`s economic policies among wider circles in the West.

In Latin America, left-wing parties were in power in most of the continent for a decade but, as this author knows from personal experience, countries such as Brazil, Venezuela and Argentina failed to seriously study enough socialist policies pursued in China. Latin America`s economic downturn after 2011, and the failure of the Latin American left to have adequate policies to deal with this, led to the left losing power in Argentina and Brazil.

The resulting self-reflection has seen much greater study in Brazil and other Latin American countries of China`s successful economic policies.

In the US and Europe, the large gap in the level of development between advanced economies and China`s developing economy previously led to study of China`s economy being excessively dominated by pure "China specialists" or the professional "bad-mouth China" media industry.

But prolonged economic slowdown in the West, and China`s success compared to developing countries in Latin America has now led to objective understanding of and interest in China`s economic policies spreading to wider circles.

The other article on this page, by US economist Mark Weisbrot, indicates the type of new analysis now appearing in the West. It is important to keep a sense of balance.

The majority of media analysis in the West continues its "bad mouthing" of China, with the decades-long claims of the "coming collapse" of China, and of hard landings and other unfavorable scenarios. But analyses such as Weisbrot`s show that more objective views of China`s economy and its successes are now reaching a wider audience in the West.

The author is a senior fellow at the Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China.