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| China-Japan-Koreas |
| China: threat or opportunity? |
| 2005-10-20 |
| A somewhat optimistic, can-do article about China seen as a free-market challenge/opportunity. Ok, might be an apologist. Long, needs p.49, see link for notes. The rise of China could be good for the West, if only it would rise to the challenge. China has come a very long way in the past 25 years. The land of the Giant Panda is also the land of giant numbers and achievements: China's population represents more than one fifth of the world's population: 1.3 billion people. Between 1978 and 2001 China's average growth rate of GDP per capita was at the top of the world's growth performance in this period (1). China's exports grew in value terms by almost 15 times between 1978 and 2001 (2). In 2002 and 2003, China was, second only to the USA, the world's largest recipient of Foreign Direct Investment (3). In 1978 almost one in three Chinese people were 'absolutely poor', according to the World Bank. This fell to under one in 20 people by 1998 (4). In 1982 one fifth of China's population lived in urban areas, and almost one in four people were illiterate. By 2000, over one third lived in urban areas and illiteracy levels had fallen to one in 15 people (5). Add to this China's industrial accomplishments: the Three Gorges Dam is the world's largest hydroelectric dam project; China has the world's longest steel-arch bridge; and Beijing Airport will be the biggest in the world by 2008. In 2001 China produced 96 million electric fans, 41 million colour TV sets, and 25 million mobile phones (6). Yet despite these phenomenal advances, Western commentators interpret trends and events with great pessimism. An acknowledgement of the incredible achievements of China in the past two-and-a-half decades is generally accompanied with a statement of the dangers that the transformation brings. On UK Radio Four's flagship current affairs programme Today in late 2004, Tim Luard, former Beijing correspondent for the BBC, echoed the view that the achievements are actually a source of anxiety: 'The sheer scale of China's economic transformation is matched only by the size of the new challenges and dangers it has created (7)'. The apparent dangers of China's rising wealth and power include the danger to the environment caused by pollution; the danger to employment and the Western economies caused by China's increasing competitiveness; and the possible military aggression of a rising power. As Stephen Roach, managing director and chief economist of Morgan Stanley, one of the largest investment banks in the USA, pointed out in 2004: 'A fickle world has changed its mind about China again. A year ago, the miracle of Chinese growth was widely seen as a bonanza for an otherwise sluggish global economy. Today China is being cast as a threat - in effect, it has become a scapegoat for many of the intractable problems that a dysfunctional world has been unable to solve.' (8) Today, the rise of China tends to be viewed in the West purely as a threat. Yet there is no reason why the West could not turn this challenge into an opportunity. China's growing economic power is a challenge for the West, but a challenge that the West can either turn to its advantage or to which it can succumb, by attempting to batten down the hatches and retreat. Perhaps this challenge is just what the West needs to kick it out of its doom-laden sense that things are getting worse and worse. Preparing to meet China's 'can-do' culture could serve to regenerate a sense of ambition and experimentation within Western societies. Although there are negative aspects of China's economic transformation, these are resolvable. More of a problem is the way that the West is transporting its own concerns into China - its loss of confidence in its own system, its embarrassment of success, lack of entrepreneurship, and attachment to the environmentalist orthodoxy. So what is going on with China? The West's main fears about this rising power tell us more about the preoccupations and double standards of commentators 'over here' than the life 'over there'. But by examining these fears, we can cut through some of the myths about China, and approach a better understanding of the realities. |
| Posted by:anonymous5089 |
| #4 whatever they get, they'll be hungry for more in a couple hours |
| Posted by: Frank G 2005-10-20 23:57 |
| #3 AIDS, SARS, bird flu, watered down antibiotics fed to the animals, water shortages, floods, Three Gorges(?) dam, desertification... Will they get their war or decimation (at best) first? |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2005-10-20 23:07 |
| #2 AIDS, SARS, bird flu, watered down antibiotics fed to the animals, water shortages, floods, Three Gorges(?) dam, desertification... Will they get their war or decimation (at best) first? |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2005-10-20 23:07 |
| #1 China: Disaster Waiting to Happen, would be a better title. First and foremost, China is a demographic mess. It is moving in the unenviable direction of either having to slaughter hundreds of millions of its own people, or doing the same to its neighbors. Unlike the rest of the world they have defied Malthusian limits to the point of catastrophe. Secondly, their administrative ability has collapsed. The best way to describe "greater China", outside of the sea coasts, is "internal colonization". They ineptly manage broad sections of the interior of their country as poorly as the British did India in the years leading up to WWII. Again, demographics are key, with everything for the enthnically Han, and nothing for everyone else. One potential catastrophe that may be averted was the "Warlord-ization" of their military, in which army generals were de facto dictators in their rural military districts for many years. This, at least, was finally realized as a tangible threat to the central government. And yet, while its military is more professional, it is engaged in a ridiculous arms race with the United States, forcing all of its neighbors to build up their own militaries. The end result that China desires has multiple goals, none of which are terribly sensible or practical: lebansraum, SE Asian military hegemony and domination of the Pacific, and to become a superpower. But none of these really addresses their serious problems. China is stuck. There is no easy solution to half a billion excess people in the region--not just theirs, but other nations as well. Were those people just gone, many of its problems would be solved, and radical solutions would be unneccesary. But as it is, all else is a sideshow until that problem is resolved. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2005-10-20 18:33 |