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Watch Out!! Diamonds! China Is Coming!!
In the past several weeks we have been highlighting the fact that China is rapidly emerging as a world super-power in trade, manufacturing, and sales. Diamond companies from the USA, Israel, India, and Belgium are scurrying to open offices and manufacturing plants in China in order to take advantage of this explosive growth and potential windfall of spending by Chinese natives.
Now comes a report issued on Sept. 16th of China's explosive rise to economic superpower status confirmed by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) think-tank in a new report predicting that it would leapfrog the United States and Germany within five years to become the world's biggest exporter.
Despite growing social strains and international concerns, OECD said there would be no let-up in China's breakneck growth.
Although China is not a member of the OECD - a group of the world's richest developed nations, the Paris-based organization published its first report on September 16 on a country that has been transformed within a quarter of a century from a struggling economy to an industrial titan.
It already accounts for 6 percent of world exports and its potential to supply the globe with low-cost manufactured goods has caused tensions in the global trading system, exemplified by the recent "bra wars" row. The OECD said China's share was on course to rise to 10 percent by 2010, by which time it would overtake the United States.
Despite 25 years of gross domestic product (GDP) growth at an annual rate of more than 9 percent, China is not expected to slow in the near future. The think-tank predicted that the world's most populous nation would overtake Britain, France and Italy to become the fourth largest economy within five years.
Hardly a day goes by without new evidence of China's surge up the ranks of the richest economies. This week Ernst & Young released a report predicting it would surpass the U.S. as the world's second largest consumer of luxury goods within 10 years.
The accounting firm forecast 10 percent to 20 percent annual growth rates in the sector until 2015, by which time sales are expected to exceed $11.5 billion, or 29 percent of the world's total, second only to Japan.
A separate study by the China Academy of Social Sciences predicted that the middle class would more than double in size by 2020 to account for about 40 percent of the 1.3 billion population.
If such statistics are not convincing enough, one must only look at the cityscapes of powerhouses such as Beijing, Shanghai and Chongqing, where the transformation is apparent in the forest of skyscrapers, shopping malls and roads.
But the OECD also identified areas that will have to be reformed if Beijing is to complete the transition from a centrally planned economy. These include strengthening the financial system, further steps to allow the currency to float freely and measures to reduce inequality.
Chiming with last week's report from the United Nations, the OECD said there was evidence of a growing gulf between urban and rural China and between rich and poor on the eastern seaboard. "Although economic dynamism has helped reduce the number living in absolute poverty, income levels are still low and inequality is on the rise, not only between the cities and rural regions, but also within the more prosperous coastal provinces," the OECD said.
The think-tank added that to reduce the gap in incomes, the government should make it easier for people to move from the country to the cities, but urbanization should also be carefully managed, partly though land law a reform of the land law.
The strains of China's spectacular growth are increasingly apparent. Energy shortages cause frequent brown-outs on the industrialized eastern seaboard during the peak demand periods of midsummer and midwinter. To ease demand, the factories of Shenzhen have to halt production one day a week and the lights on Shanghai's Bund, the old financial district, are cut on many nights.
Some of the biggest problems have been in the area of the environment and health. According to the U.N. and the OECD, China's ability to meet the millennium development goal of cutting infant mortality by two-thirds is being hampered by unequal access to healthcare, and this point was also emphasized by the OECD.
But the state is no longer the main force for change. The OECD noted that, as a result of "profound shifts in government policies, the private sector is now driving China's remarkable economic growth". Over half of China's GDP was produced by privately controlled enterprises.
"Made In China" might have made you laugh, sneer, and snicker in the past, but now the Chinese are laughing all the way to the Bank!
Comments
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Posted by: special on January 2, 2008 9:04 AM