Posted on 10/26/2002 8:25:34 AM PDT by Enemy Of The State
'China to Replace US as the Engine for World Economy'
Taking advantage of World Economic Forum Asian Department Director Dr. Richter's visit to China, our reporter recently conducted an exclusive interview with him on such hot issues as the prospect of China's economy, and the development trend of the world economy. Dr. Richter indicated that China is expected to become a new "engine" for world economic development within five years because it is one of the few bright points of the world economy.
Reporter: The UN, the IMF and other organizations have, in their regular economic reports, lowered their anticipated world economic growth, the US-centered global economic recession tends to become increasingly serious, what's your view about this and when can the world economy get out of a slump?
Richter: The figures released recently by The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) show that Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) globe-wide dropped 50 percent compared with last year, this is a very pessimistic figure, among all regions including the United States, Europe and Japan, only investment made in China has witnessed growth, the world economy presents not an optimistic outlook, the globe will possibly enter a new recession which will last a longer time. There exist problems with some large transnational corporations of Europe and America, such as the famous American Ford and Italian Fiat, and some transnational corporations even face the danger of being closed.
The US economy once had all along been the engine for world economic development, but now it is faced with predicament and plagued by chaos, under such circumstances, who can replace the United States to become the engine for world economic development? Is it Europe, Japan or China? The situation in Europe does not make one feel optimistic either, although Japan presently remains the world's second largest economic entity, its banking system is faced with many difficult problems, if its banking system is properly rectified, it may give new hopes, but due to its domestic problems, it is impossible for Japan to replace the United States. Then, who, after all, can replace the United States? Only China! China's economic situation is very good, not only its domestic situation is favorable, but also more and more overseas investments are turned to China which is hopefully to take the place of the United States in five years to become the main motive force for global economic growth.
Reporter: What influence will the deteriorating external environment exert on China's economic development?
Richter: China will not suffer from negative influence, on the contrary, it will possibly get benefit therefrom. China is one of the bright points of the global economy, and it will attract more and more foreign investments. Of course, China also has competitive rivals, both India and Mexico are trying to attract foreign capital.
Reporter: Would you please give a forecast of the prospect for China's economic development, what favorable and unfavorable factors are therein, especially in the aftermath of China's WTO Entry?
Richter: The competitiveness of China's economy is growing in strength, not only State-owned enterprises, but private enterprises as well are witnessing ever-faster development, Chinese enterprises have taken an encouraging step toward globalization, such as Hairer, Legend and TCL, their products are rapidly entering European and American markets, these companies are developing step by step to become global transnational corporations. From a long-term point of view, joining the WTO is beneficial to China, perhaps many transnational companies may create some sort of impact and bring competition on Chinese enterprises, but this is beneficial to China, because only under competitive conditions, can Chinese enterprises experience rapid growth and China's markets become more mature and perfect. In the past, many domestic enterprises were only faced with domestic markets, but now they are confronted with large global markets. Many domestic enterprises have begun to buy up foreign enterprises, for instance, the Shanghai Auto Group participates in buying the share of the ROK's , Daewoo, Petro-China invested in Indonesia and bought the share of an Indonesian oil company.
Of course, China also faces problems that must not be neglected, such as the gap between the east and west economic development, unemployment and the problem relating to the ?¡ãoverheated?¡À infrastructure construction in various localities.
Reporter: In the first half of this year, you stated in one article carried on the Singaporean Strait Times that the Group 8 (the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Britain, Canada and Russia) should accept China as one of its members. You enumerated in the article many reasons for this, in your opinion, what's the most important point?
Richter: Western countries should change their views about China, many European and American people know little about the situation in China, they should come more often to see for themselves. As to the most important reason, let me give an example. As a member of Group 8, Italy's total GDP amount is incomparable with that of China staying outside the Group, this is the most important index, if Group 8 wants to be representative in the world, it should not neglect the existence of China. Of course, involved here are not only economic factors, but also political factors. The importance of China's economic development has been recognized by more and more people, Western countries should treat China as an equal partner as soon as possible.
Reporter: There are some experts and scholars in the world who express doubts about the truth of China's economic statistics. What do you think about this issue?
Rocjter: I believe that the figures provided by official Chinese sources on economic growth are correct, the trends of China's economic growth are clear to all. Since China is a large country, the composition of various statistical data is very complicated, although we cannot avoid the existence of small errors, whether the growth is 7 percent or 8 percent is not important, small errors will not exert much influence, what is important is that China's economy is still growing steadily.
Reporter: It is said that you are writing a new book on China. Can you say something about this book, what kind of viewpoint are you to present to the readers?
Richter: In this book I will focus on the discussion of three possible scenarios for China's economic development: first, China to replace the United States to become the engine for world economic development; second, China will be plagued by a variety of problems such as stagflation of the Chinese economy and unemployment; third, a mixture of the above two kinds of situation. I think the first scenario is most likely to happen, that is, China will become the engine for world economic development.
Spoken like a true zero summer.
We are not resource limited creatures, we are idea limited. Obviously we will have to develop better energy sources. Americans don't have the freedom to do the serious reactor research required to meet the energy needs of the future. The Chinese will not have this problem. The only reason we are dependent on oil is that we allowed the mob to dominate and control the scientific community in the name of enviromentalism. Sheesh, even the French are ahead of us when it comes to reactor tech. There must be a way to go from nuke to liquid fuel. Either nuke->electricity-> hydrogen via electrolysis. Or hydrogen -> ethanol. Had we spent 10% of what we've spent on so called fusion research we would have this done by now.
Instead my republican senator is hawking friggin windmills.....Ugh...I'm going scream.
Uh huh. And Japan will be the next dominant world power. And Germany will eventually rule the European Union. And global warming will flood our coastlines in the next hundred years. And the Sox will win the pennant ...
Rumours of our demise are greatly exaggerated.
Something very weird is going on with their banks. In Beijing and Shanghai every third building is a bank. Who needs that many banks and what are they doing??
Of course, America has *institutionalized* corruption in our banking system. Folks like JP Morgan and Fannie Mae are happy to take private profit while the risks are "socialized".
The Chinese will want to live 'just like us' - it's human nature and... it's where they are heading now.
Sorry, what's the question again?
China's "economic miracle" is nothing more than the same "miracle" produced by Hitler's concentration camps. Twenty million prisoners in labor camps makes for a very low cost work force. The image of China's economy for me is what I saw inside a low-cost compact refrigerator imported from China - on the metal parts of the cooling coil was dried blood from the injured hands of an apparently desparate factory worker.
Look, when the price of oil gets high enough we will use something else.
Your question assumes static conditions and technology. Its like an 1870's American asking: What will be the price of whale oil in 1960 if 200 million American's want to light their homes. In 1830 if you found oil on your land it *lost* value. Land, after all, was for grazing animals and that filthy black goo ruined a perfectly good pasture. In 1920 if you found oil on your land, you were rich. What changed? Our Ideas. Thats it. We decided burning kerosene was easier than hunting whales. Eventually we even found a use for that pesky flammable waste product, gasoline
We can have as much energy as we want. The primary obstacles, as always, are more political than technical.
There is enough energy in the monitor sitting in front of you to run your state for the rest of the year. You just have to ask Nature politely to give it to you. We are not materials limited we are idea limited critters. This is the entire *point* of human beings.
To the best of my knowledge, Walmart doesn't manufacture in Red China or sell into the Red Chinese market. Buying stuff from China and selling it into the home market has been a successful strategy for centuries (with periodic time outs for wars and revolutions.)
The flip side based on what I can recall is that selling into China or attempting to manufacture there has rarely been successful. The most notable "success story" was the opium trade.
American corporations are gaga about Red China, but the optomism is precisely that ... and a boat load of optomism and a hundred dollars will buy you thousands of shares of what were once considered promising tech stocks.
And the Cubs will win the World Series...
I said: "Free Market Economies only work when the people are free."
You said: "Are you sure? I thought the Confederacy had a working market economy. The Roman Empire had a market economy that worked well, and it had slave labor".
Hmmmmmmmmmm..........maybe we're not talking about the same thing ("Economies") here. I can only draw from my yearlong Sophmore level Economics class and common sense.
Look at the portrayal of the German economy in SCHINDLER'S LIST. This is one of the best portayals of a FACIST ECONOMY that I can think of.
Now.............think of one of those Jewish workers in those sweat-shops, run by the hundreds of "Schindlers" during those times (or for that matter some Chinese worker), "on the floor" doing the same menial repetitive task over and over.
Where is the innovation to come from? Would one of those Jewish (Chinese) workers make a suggestion to improve one of those products? Would they suggest a better manufacturing technique for Cyclon-B that was used in the gas chambers? How about a more efficient way of making a rifle bullet or shell casing (used in the movie) to be used to kill the approaching Allies, their liberators? Pragmatically, probably not.
Could one of these workers, if he/she had a better idea, start a new business with an improved product as in the Western Economic Model?
When I mean free...........I MEAN FREE! Both the worker and the employer must be free to make decisions affecting their status for a Free Market to take place.
I don't know if this is even close to answering your question. Unfortunately, I'm a biomedical researcher, not an economist.
When I say a Free Market Economy...............I am talking about the mature Western Technological Economy example. There is a big difference between what Hayek meant in THE ROAD TO SERFDOM and the Roman model.
This may be so but... this won't happen either. The only reason we, as a species, continue the way we are, is because the ability to produce huge amounts of energy is tightly controlled by a limited number of governments. When the genie is completely out of the bottle, then subsequent wars or terrorist activities are likely to reduce the world population to a fraction of what we have now.
A new beginning MAY be possible when the population drops to... maybe a lot less than 1% of what we have today.
This may be so but... this won't happen either. The only reason we, as a species, continue the way we are, is because the ability to produce huge amounts of energy is tightly controlled by a limited number of governments.
Uh...I'm not following you. Do you have something against prosperity and energy independence?
When the genie is completely out of the bottle, then subsequent wars or terrorist activities are likely to reduce the world population to a fraction of what we have now.
A new beginning MAY be possible when the population drops to... maybe a lot less than 1% of what we have today.
You sound like a genocidal Earth First member.
You need large populations to create the crown fires of capital and intellect that make civilization possible.I'll grant you that we have too many stupid people on the planet. Often this is a self correcting problem.
As for the natural selection of the 'markets' eliminating the cooks and the crooks, keep dreaming. Encouraging and supporting failure while punishing and discouraging success has been the law in most of the worlds and our government is curretly expending lots of resources to enforce the above rule.
And... thanks for trying so hard to stick a label on my views. Trust me. I'm not happy that we are heading where we are heading - I have kids too. But... I'm sorry to say, we ARE heading that way. If you disagree, please describe Earth let's say, 1000 years from today.
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