Posted on 03/09/2005 4:08:37 PM PST by SJackson
WASHINGTON (IPS/GIN) - China is quickly overtaking the United States as the world’s biggest consumer of global resources, energized by a dynamic economy that is growing at a record pace, says a Washington research group.
“China is no longer just a developing country. It is an emerging economic superpower, one that is writing economic history,” said Lester Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute and author of a new report. “If the last century was the American century, this one looks to be the Chinese century.”
The report points to China’s increasing consumption patterns and expanding influence on the U.S. economy. Mr. Brown says these trends are an early warning that China’s rapid growth could lead to a globally unsustainable use of resources.
“What we are learning from China is this: the Western industrial development model is not going to work for China and therefore for the world—that is, a fossil fuel-based, automobile-centered, throwaway economy,” Mr. Brown said.
For example, if paper use per person in China were to reach the U.S. level, China would need more paper than the entire world produces, he said.
“They have sort of done that on the national level for a lot of the key resources,” he said. “But what if they do it per person, which means expanding consumption something like four-fold over what it is today?”
The report says that China is outpacing the United States in four of the five most important commodities: grain, meat, coal and steel. The fifth, oil, is still consumed in the United States at rates triple that of China, about 20.4 million barrels per day.
But while oil use in the United States rose by 15 percent from 1994 to 2004, use in the Asian giant more than doubled. China has now surpassed Japan as the world’s second largest consumer of oil after the United States, said the report, entitled “China Replacing United States as World’s Biggest Consumer.”
China also consumes about 800 million tons of another fossil fuel, coal, which meets nearly two-thirds of the country’s energy demand.
Chinese consumption patterns are rising in other categories. It has opened a wide lead with grain: 382 million tons, compared to 278 million tons for the United States last year. Among the three big grains, the world’s most populous country leads in the consumption of both wheat and rice, and trails the United States only in corn.
Among leading consumer products, China trails the United States only in automobiles. By 2003, it had 24 million motor vehicles, scarcely one-tenth of the 226 million on U.S. roads. But with car sales doubling over the last two years, China’s fleet is quickly catching up.
Currently, China imports vast quantities of grain, soybeans, iron ore, aluminum, copper, platinum, phosphates, potash, oil and natural gas, forest products for lumber and paper, and the cotton needed for its world-dominating textile industry. These massive imports have put China at the center of the raw materials economy. Its huge appetite for materials has driven up not only commodity prices, but ocean shipping rates, as well.
China’s use of steel, a key indicator of industrial development, has also soared. Steel consumption is now more than twice that of the United States, driven by urban migration and the construction of thousands of factories and high-rise apartment and office buildings.
The United States still maintains a wide lead over China in terms of individual consumption patterns, mainly due to its much lower per capita income of $5,300—about one-seventh the $38,000 of the United States.
The report also examines China’s growing influence on the U.S. economy, which has become heavily dependent on Chinese capital to underwrite its fast-growing debt. If China ever decides to divert this capital surplus elsewhere, either to internal investment or to the development of oil, gas and mineral resources elsewhere in the world, the U.S. economy will be in trouble, the report says.
China’s record-high domestic savings and huge trade surplus with the United States are just two of the most visible manifestations of its economic strength. It is now China, along with Japan, that is buying the U.S. treasury securities that enable the United States to run the largest fiscal deficit in history.
“China’s eclipse of the United States as a consumer nation should be seen as another milestone along the path of its evolution as a world economic leader,” Mr. Brown said.
So I guess imports and consumption are now the measure of a great country.
In other news, "China executed 15,000 christian schoolgirls today"
LOL. Wasn't it the dawn of the 'Japanese century' thirty years ago? And wasn't the USSR going to 'bury' the USA twenty-five years before that? Oh wait, maybe it's the dawn of the EUro-weenie century... Yawn...
That would not surprise me in the least. Yesterday, there was a thread, showing uniformed Chinese men murdering several females.
China has a huge problem with pollution and other environmental issues.
Gee. Could the fact there are a billion more Chinese than Americans have anything to do with the amount of food China consumes?
I mean, do Americans really want to eat more than what they're eating now?
Gee. Could the fact there are a billion more Chinese than Americans have anything to do with the amount of food China consumes?
I mean, do Americans really want to eat more than what they're eating now?
They are absolutely convinced it is/will be so.
They are absolutely determined to make it so.
And, if possible, the Chinese Millenium.
Even millions of Chinese on the street will attest to this as their just due; a foregone conclusion and long overdue.
China is not the US in any way shape or form. It is not a "Capitalist" society or economy. "Freedom of" is not a phrase used or practiced in China.
well...if China keeps expanding at this rate with its poor pollution standards, they'll all suffocate before the end of the "Chinease century"
Yes. Fortunately America doesn't need a century.
If we'd signed on to Kyoto, it would be a lot bigger. That makes it our fault, either way.
Not as long as China remains a communist state...
I'd say a large grain of salt. Their economy is riddled with corruption. Bad loans, phony books, corrupt officials all "getting theirs". Not sustainable.
Their economy is riddled with corruption. Bad loans, phony books, corrupt officials all "getting theirs".Gee, that's sounds familiar.
I don't know all the facts, except that it's a problem that will get worse before it gets better.
China is proof that capitalism, not democracy creates prosperity.
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