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| China-Japan-Koreas |
| Massive Population Lifts Nation's Growth |
| 2011-02-14 |
| China's rise as the world's second-largest economy highlights a new postindustrial reality: Population counts as much as productivity in determining economic power. Since the industrial revolution, that hasn't been the case. The productivity of workers in the U.S., Britain, Germany and Japan not only made those countries rich, but it also made them the world's largest economies despite having far smaller populations than China and India. China's rapid growth over the past 30 years has pulled hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty and turned China into the world's factory floor. But China's per capita gross domestic product is still just $4,300, according to the International Monetary Fund. It is largely because of the country's population of 1.3 billion that China is moving to the top ranks of economic powers. On Monday, it formally surpassed Japan when Japan reported its 2010 GDP. |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #18 I wouldn't say that I'm "looking forward" to either. India's gender ratio at birth is probably influenced by (1) the practice of expensive dowries to the groom at marriage and (2) the lack of a government-organized old age pension scheme, which means that the Indian tradition of sons caring for parents in their dotage (and of daughters-in-law neglecting their parents) makes having a son an indispensable part of a comfortable retirement. The Chinese tradition of the bride price (where the bride's parents get a large payment from the groom upon marriage) actually makes daughters somewhat less of a burden on a family's finances. You've heard of a wedding ring costing a month's salary. Six months' salary for a Chinese bride price is not unheard of. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2011-02-14 22:28 |
| #17 We can look forward to an India with an even more lopsided male-female ratio than China. I wouldn't say that I'm "looking forward" to either. |
| Posted by: Secret Master 2011-02-14 22:01 |
| #16 fine, I consider Manifest Destiny to carry over to the deserts of Mongolia. Who are the Chinese to oppose my vision? |
| Posted by: Frank G 2011-02-14 22:00 |
| #15 what we consider warlike activities, they consider efforts to bring peace to the world. Instead we just try to appease these jerks and surrender all our ancestors have accomplished. I don't see China or the Muslim's looking at the other side of the coin. |
| Posted by: Water Modem 2011-02-14 21:33 |
| #14 The problem is one of definitions - what we consider Chinese imperialism, the Chinese considered the restoration of China's rightful place in the world. This is more or less how Muslims consider Islam to be a peaceful religion - what we consider warlike activities, they consider efforts to bring peace to the world. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2011-02-14 21:11 |
| #13 If you can find a copy, read "Tuf Voyaging" it describes the china situation Perfectly. India has 90% of China's population and only 40% of the land. India also has a higher unemployment rate. The problem with China is that it has always been an aggressive imperialist that denies in its traditional writings that it is an aggressive imperialist. Its worldview is certainly that of an aggressive imperialist. Note that India has a higher (!) male-female sex ratio at birth than China, despite the lack of Indian compulsory population control measures, so we can look forward to an India with an even more lopsided male-female ratio than China. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2011-02-14 21:07 |
| #12 If you can find a copy, read "Tuf Voyaging" it describes the china situation Perfectly. (That's Why I LOVE REAL Science Fiction, It's really Sociology with the names changed) It's so perfect it looks like the chinese Empire with the serial numbers filed off. |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2011-02-14 20:33 |
| #11 The official tariff is only part of the story, I suspect. The government subsidizes appliance purchases for people, but probably only for Chinese manufactured goods. It subsidizes raw material costs for _Chinese_ manufacturers... out of the massive expansion of their money supply they've undertaken in the last decade. They have been good little mercantilists, and they've gotten a lot more out of their government interventions in their economy than we have gotten from ours, tariffs completely aside. |
| Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2011-02-14 19:48 |
| #10 Having written the above, a reciprocal tariff policy might not be a bad thing. In essence, the average tariff levied by China on US goods exported to China could be levied by the US on Chinese goods exported to the US. The beauty of such a policy is that it is in no way worse than what the Chinese are doing, and the numbers are transparent to both Chinese policymakers and the Chinese public. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2011-02-14 19:15 |
| #9 Protectionism will work this time honest.... Weirdly enough, protectionism probably wouldn't be as negative for the US (the world's major importer) as it would be for China (the world's major exporter), given that the countries most seriously hurt by the Great Depression were the US and Germany (both export powerhouses at the time). The real problem with a knock-down drag-out trade war is that it could lead to actual war. The Great Depression has been posited as one of the causes of WWII. What countries cannot achieve via trade they might attempt to achieve via war. Given China's aggressive territorial moves despite its blistering rate of economic growth, it would be interesting (and perhaps nightmarish) to see what might happen if a wide-ranging trade war not only muzzled that growth, but resulted in a 1/3 contraction of its economy. If history has taught us anything, it's that gender gaps don't cause internal unrest - unemployed males with no income do. (Of course, if China sets up a welfare system, that might keep a lid on things). |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2011-02-14 19:05 |
| #8 Gonna be a lot of single males over there. Lot of single males in East Asia (and the West), too. I don't understand where journalists get this strange idea that single males in China = war. Apply this idea to males stateside (~50m unmarried out of a population of ~150m), and the absurdity emerges. China could go to war, not because of demographics, but for the same reason that Imperial Japan and Germany previously went to war - a combination of imperial glory and territorial aggrandizement. Note that Germany's dead from WWI was 2m out of a total population of about 30m men. Did this shortage of men discourage Hitler from waging WWII? |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2011-02-14 18:35 |
| #7 Protectionism will work this time honest.... /idiot. |
| Posted by: Bright Pebbles 2011-02-14 17:49 |
| #6 No.. because Free Trade is not Fair Trade. |
| Posted by: Water Modem 2011-02-14 14:38 |
| #5 One child policy w/ a heavy emphasis on males. Many females did not make it past the ultrasound or the trip to the woods right after birth. Gonna be a lot of single males over there. |
| Posted by: tipover 2011-02-14 14:08 |
| #4 What #3 Javins3089 said! |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2011-02-14 13:05 |
| #3 "It is largely because of the country's population of 1.3 billion that China is moving to the top ranks of economic powers." No, it's largely that our companies and chattering class freely gave all our technology, factories, and jobs to them and left the west as a hollow, bankrupt shell. |
| Posted by: Javins3089 2011-02-14 12:49 |
| #2 Communism's last gift to China is yet to be realized. The One Child policy means that China will be old before it is rich. And they might just get a diversionary war as a special added bonus. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2011-02-14 07:30 |
| #1 China's rapid growth over the past 30 years has pulled hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty and turned China into the world's factory floor. Not that anyone in the Dead Stream Media or academia would acknowledge the first 30 years of communism-socialism abjectly failed in pulling hundreds of millions out of poverty. There's a lesson to be ignored. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2011-02-14 07:08 |