China als 2e grootste economie

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Een paar weken voordat vorig jaar de Olympische Spelen begonnen, sloot
China fabrieken in een paar provincies om de smog tegen te gaan.
De scheepvaartbeurs kelderde en is tot op vandaag niet volledig
hersteld, terwijl de Chinese economie vorig jaar met bijna 10% is gegroeid.
Het duurt niet lang voordat het nummer een is, en is nu al de grootste
financier tussen landen onderling.

De agenda van China ligt open op de pagina's 2010 tot 2100, de Westerse
agenda's enkel voor de komende paar jaar.
Op het Westerse beleid is geen pijl te trekken (om over uitvoering maar
niet te spreken), het beleid in China wordt bepaald door een kleine
groep en doelen worden gehaald.

Sommige critici geven af op de statistieken van China, maar vergeten
Japan en over de Westerse bankbalansen wordt alleen gepraat door
accountants (waar wilt u dat we tekenen?).

Groet / Cees


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/12/world/asia/12china.html
January 12, 2010
As China Rises, Fears Grow on Whether Boom Can Endure
By MICHAEL WINES

BEIJING — As much of the world struggles to clamber out of a serious
recession, a gradual flow of economic power from West to East has turned
into a flood.

New high points, it seems, are reached daily. China surged past the
United States to become the world’s largest automobile market — in
units, if not in dollars, figures released Monday show. It also toppled
Germany as the biggest exporter of manufactured goods, according to
year-end trade data. World Bank estimates suggest that China — the
world’s fifth-largest economy four years ago — will shortly overtake
Japan to claim the No. 2 spot.

The shift of economic gravity to China has occurred partly because
growth here remained robust even as the world’s developed economies
suffered the steepest drop in trade and economic output in decades.

But that did not happen by chance: China’s decisive government
intervention in the economy, combined with the defiant optimism of its
companies and consumers, has propelled an economy that until recently
had seemed tethered to the health of its major export markets, including
the United States.

Beijing’s state-run news media, indulging in a moment of
self-congratulation, have hailed China’s new economic prominence as
proof of national superiority.

The country’s economic miracle, the newspaper People’s Daily boasted
last week, exists because its leaders — unlike those in other, unnamed
nations — can make quick decisions and ensure underlings carry them out.
The Great Recession, the newspaper said, has laid bare cracks in
plodding Western-style capitalism.

Yet China confronts a number of challenges about its recent surge,
including whether its formula for growth is sustainable, and how it will
manage its increasingly strained economic relations with the outside
world. Those are likely to prove challenging issues for a leadership
unaccustomed to making policy under an international spotlight.

Sustaining a global-size economy is nowhere near as simple as building
one, some Chinese and Western economists say. As the Chinese navigate
toward a bigger role in the world financial system, they are already
running into diplomatic and political headwinds.

At home, ordinary citizens and economists alike worry that the
government’s decision to flood the economy with cash has created
speculative bubbles — in housing, in lending — that could burst with
disastrous effect. But curbing speculation requires moves, such as
raising interest rates, that could crimp the sprees of investment and
industrial expansion that are the main contributors to growth.

Abroad, the pressure on China to revalue its currency, the renminbi, is
strengthening, and it seems sure to intensify after trade statistics
released Sunday showed that China’s yearlong downturn in export growth
reversed in December. Keeping the renminbi fixed at a low rate against
the dollar boosts China’s exports and its economy. But increasingly, it
angers its trade partners.

China once could wave off complaints about its currency policies,
arguing that it was a developing nation entitled to a bit of slack from
its Western customers. But with the world’s fastest-growing economy —
and more than $2 trillion in foreign reserves — that argument looks
increasingly untenable.

“At a time when you’ve got 10 percent unemployment in the U.S. and a
very slow and gradual global recovery — and China seems to be
skyrocketing — the pressure on the Chinese to change some of these
policies, including the exchange-rate policy, is really going to grow
this year,” said Nicholas Consonery, a China analyst at Eurasia Group, a
New York-based political risk research firm.

In theory, China’s growing economic clout should benefit everyone: in an
interconnected world, growing trade creates jobs and money everywhere.

“China’s extremely important, no doubt about it. And over all, the more
important China becomes, the better it is for the American economy,”
Scott Kennedy, who heads the Research Center for Chinese Politics and
Business at Indiana University, said in an interview.

That Shanghai-assembled iPod, Mr. Kennedy said, is the product of
American research and design and marketing, and most of the proceeds
from its sale go back into American coffers. But China’s rise also poses
new risks both for Beijing and for its trading partners.

Its largely bruise-free journey through last year’s economic crisis
aside, not everyone is convinced that Beijing has eliminated threats to
its financial and economic health.

Hit hard by an initial drop in exports that was frighteningly steep for
a leadership that has long promised and delivered fast growth, China
poured $585 billion in stimulus money into its domestic economy.
Officials also ordered state-run banks to increase their lending by
double that amount, triggering a spree of easy money that created jobs
for migrant factory workers and fueled rises in the price of assets,
like stocks and real estate.

Some experts fear that too much of the stimulus money was put into
unprofitable projects and bad loans that will be exposed in a few years.
In that view, China’s 2009 boom, in which automakers sold nearly 14
million cars and trucks, and housing prices doubled, is really a sign of
an overheated economy at risk of serious recession down the road.

Judged by the numbers, China’s economy still looks robust. In Beijing,
officials said, per capita gross domestic product is expected to exceed
$4,000 this year, a 10 percent jump from 2009. Last month, the value of
China’s exports leaped by nearly a third over the same month in 2008 —
and imports jumped 55 percent, pointing toward growth in manufacturing.

But a Chinese economic crisis, which could have been shrugged off a few
years ago, would be a considerably more serious event in a world in
which Beijing runs the second-largest economy.

The government appears concerned. Last week, the central bank edged up
the rate on an often-watched interbank loan, the first such hike in five
months. That seemed to signal concern that the economy was expanding too
quickly.

Many experts see few signs of immediate danger. After all, they note,
China has gone on splurges before — building too many steel mills, and
too many office buildings — only to see the nation’s breakneck growth
sop up the excess capacity. With nearly a billion people still clawing
to advance beyond peasant status, they say, China’s growth story has
many chapters ahead.

Mr. Kennedy, the Indiana University expert, said he was less certain
that endless growth is such a panacea. “No one defies economic laws,” he
said. “Eventually you get it, whether you want it or not.”

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