Wed - December 14, 2005

China Incorporated (Part Two)


On the one hand, China is one of the main buyers of American treasury bonds helping to finance the deficit and to maintain low interest rates in the U.S. At the same time, China, whose goods shipped to the U.S. grew by 50 percent last year, is the second largest exporter to the U.S. after Canada.

...A simple rhetoric will not diminish the importance of the high sustainable rates of growth in China in the last 10 years nor prevent it from being the second largest holder of international reserves after Japan.

...There is significant indication that China will gradually cease from being a country of cheap labor to become an attractive market for the world’s products and services.

...The speed of Chinese economic growth, the combination of centralized economy and open market, the mixture of communism, capitalism, and authoritarianism baffle and disturb western governments even as Asian nations like India intensify agreements and relations with China.

In this global context, it is egregious that our government and political leaders seem oblivious to the fact that Mexico is loosing its appeal as a country that offers interesting opportunities for investment and growth.... Instead, they should be focusing their efforts to the formulation of a modern political agenda that seriously address Mexico’s greater national problems and to making this country more aware of and responsive to the developments in the rest of the world.

Posted at 07:00 PM     Read More  

China Incorporated (Part One)


Official numbers would place China’s economy as one seventh of the US economy but figures such as those from the CIA estimates it to be a third of the US. Based on the urbanization data he provided, Fishman projected that in next the 15 years, 300 million of the Chinese population will emigrate to the cities, implying the need to construct a city as large as Houston every month to provide adequate housing for them.

...Also noticeable is the deep purchasing power and consumption capacity of the new cosmopolitan middle-class who have access to enormous shopping centers, bookstores, restaurants, bars, and discotheques comparable to those in New York or Paris. However, the stark gap between the rich and poor is all too visible as poverty and inequality, and pollution produced by decrepit factories and utility plants, lurk vividly if not viciously in some regions.

...A few days ago vice prime minister Zeng Peritan gave the title of "distinguished economists" to Xue Muqiao who is 101 year old, to octogenarians Ma Hong and Lui Guoguang, and to the relatively young Wo Jinglian who is 75 years old. All of them have favored a market economy approach which has been credited for the fast economic growth and the enormous wealth generated in China in the last 10 years.

Posted at 06:59 PM     Read More  

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