The Dragon Diaries

China overtakes Japan as third largest exporter in world

2005-04-17T06:46:00.000-07:00

China has overtaken Japan as the world's third largest exporter, the World Trade Organisation said yesterday, after a surge in demand for its electronic goods led to a 35 per cent jump in overseas sales.

The 35 per cent jump in the value of China's exports in 2004, which were up by a fifth in volume terms, was largely propelled by a 45 per cent surge in exports of electronic goods, according to Michael Finger, WTO senior economist. By contrast, shipments of textiles and clothing, which make up a sixth of Chinese exports, rose 15-17 per cent by value last year.

In dollar terms, world trade in goods rose 21 per cent in 2004 to $8,880bn (€6,870bn, £4,683bn). This was the biggest increase in 25 years, reflecting both strong real growth and an 11 per cent rise in dollar prices owing to depreciation of the US currency.

China is now the biggest merchandise trader in Asia and the third largest in the world for both exports and imports, making it a key driver of world trade growth. Its insatiable appetite for fuel and other raw materials was one reason why high oil prices failed to depress the global economy last year, Mr Finger noted.

Demand from China also helped boost trade in other regions, especially Africa and South America, where Chinese investment in both natural resources and manufacturing has burgeoned in recent years. Africa's exports, helped by high oil prices, rose by more than 30 per cent in dollar terms last year, and exports from South and Central America showed a similar increase.

As a result, the value of exports by all developing countries rose by more than a quarter, bringing their share of world trade to 31 per cent, the highest since 1950.

China's role in underpinning world trade may become even more important this year if, as predicted, the falling dollar starts to restrain US import growth.

China's Retail Sales Rose 13.6% in First Two Months of 2005

2005-03-13T20:08:00.000-08:00

Bubble? What bubble? The fast-rising personal income of people in China is continuing to power one of the miracle economies of the last few decades.

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China's retail sales climbed 13.6 percent in the first two months of 2005 as rising incomes spurred spending in the world's most-populous nation.

Sales rose to 1.03 trillion yuan ($124 billion), according to Beijing-based Mainland Marketing Research Co. (China), which releases monthly figures on behalf of the statistics bureau. The gain followed a 14.5 percent jump from a year earlier in December and compares with the median 13.8 percent increase forecast in a Bloomberg News survey of four economists.

Rising spending is prompting companies including McDonald's Corp. and Wumart Stores Inc. to expand in China, helping sustain economic growth amid a government clampdown on investment in industries including real estate, autos and steel. Premier Wen Jiabao said March 5 the government will lower taxes to help boost consumer spending this year.

``As long as consumer spending is growing at around this level, there is less worry about the prospect of a hard landing for the economy,'' said Qu Hongbin, senior economist at HSBC Holdings Plc in Hong Kong.

For February alone, sales rose 15.8 percent after climbing 11.5 percent in January. Economists look at combined figures for the two months to allow for distortions caused by changes in the timing of the weeklong Lunar New Year holiday, which fell in February this year and January in 2004.

China International Patents Up 38%

2005-03-11T19:38:00.000-08:00

Although the number of international patents filed by global Chinese corporations was a small slice of the total international patents (120,000), and a smidgen of the total domestic Chinese patents (250,000 filed), the 1,800 filed was a growth of 38%, by far the largest percentage growth and a harbinger of things to come as more Chinese companies enter the export market and seek to protect their IP.

The New Face of China

2005-03-11T19:25:00.000-08:00

A female soldier with a camera takes pictures outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, just after China passes the anti-=secession bill against Taiwan.

Dalai Lama: Tibetans benefit by remaining within China

2005-03-09T21:13:00.000-08:00

His Holiness The Dalai Lama, perhaps the religious leader I respect most in this world, noted that the Tibetans have benefited greatly from the autonomous province's being a part of China, although he also noted there are still problems that need to be resolved.

This supports my Chinese friends' viewpoint that Tibet was a land of great poverty before the government pumped large amounts of money into developing the province.

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In a statement on the 46th anniversary of the Tibetan People's Uprising, he said "I want to reassure the Chinese authorities that as long as I am responsible for the affairs of Tibet, we remain fully committed to the Middle Way Approach of not seeking independence for Tibet and are willing to remain within the People's Republic of China.

"I am convinced that in the long run such an approach is of benefit to the Tibetan people for their material progress," he said.

Commending China for the economic progress it had made in the last two decades, he, however, added that its image was "tarnished by her human rights records, undemocratic actions, the lack of the rule of the law and unequal implementation of autonomy rights regarding minorities, including the Tibetans.

"All these are a cause for more suspicion and distrust from the outside world... In my view, it is important that as China becomes a powerful and respectable nation, she should be able to adopt a reasonable policy with confidence."

While acknowledging that there had been a great deal of economic and infrastructural progress since the formation of the Tibet Autonomous Region four decades ago - "the Golmud-Lhasa railway link being built is a case in point" - he said people of the region had been facing suspicions and growing restrictions.

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Silicon Valley Chinese Vote Shanghai as Top Job Location

2005-03-06T22:27:00.000-08:00

This is a trend that I am personally seeing, where Chinese in the USA, dispirited by the lack of job growth in the country, are starting to invest and even move to China in order to take aprt in the exploding Chinese economy.

In this new poll of Silicon Valley Chinese American semi-conductor professionals, the overall best choice as a Job location was Shanghai.

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According to a recently released report, Shanghai, China's cosmopolitan and commercial hub, is viewed by Chinese American professionals as the city poised with the best development future. The USA, Taiwan and Beijing follow behind as choice locations. Among the decision factors to evaluate a job location, the most important is the potential for growth. The second is family and the third is quality of life.

The report further points out among all those surveyed, that half work in at least two locations. 93% work in America. Chen Jien Yun, a Taiwan University researcher and visiting scholar with the Stanford Project on Regions of Innovation and Entrepreneurship pointed out 51% of those surveyed work in one location, 34% work in two, 10% work in three, 4% work in four locations. There was also 1% who commute between five working locations. Thus, there seems to be quite many "seagulls", who fly between Silicon Valley and the Pacific Rim.

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BBC Poll: China is better for world than USA or Russia

2005-03-05T17:35:00.000-08:00

A VERY interesting new poll by the BBC shows that more people in the world think of China as a positive influence in the world than the US or Russia.

It again shows what some people don't seem to realize - China has a very long history of much more benign nature than Europeans or Americans. Whereas the Europeans and Americans were wiping out entire cultures in their quest for slaves or raw materials, China never engaged in such acts, even at the heights of its dominance in technology and military might.

This poll is more interesting given the fact that China is STILL a benign totalitarian state, albeit not on par with one-man dictatorial governments, while both the US and Russia are relatively more democratic.

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The survey of 22,953 people was conducted for the BBC World Service by the polling organisation GlobeScan, together with the Program on International Policy Attitudes (Pipa) at the University of Maryland. In total, 48% of people polled in 22 countries said China's role was mainly positive. Only 30% saw it as mainly negative.

China came out favourably when the results were compared with similar surveys looking at the global influence of Russia and the US.

An average of 38% of respondents saw the US as having a positive influence, with just 36% saying the same for Russia.

China's growing economic power is also seen as positive in the majority of nations polled.

Even in Mexico - whose manufacturers are often in direct competition with those in China - 54% of people polled were positive about China's economic rise.

Even in neighbouring Asian countries, which have historically been suspicious of China's dominance, opinions were relatively benign.

An exception was Japan, where only 22% of people polled said China had a mainly positive influence. Most Japanese respondents expressed no opinion, with only 25% saying China's role was negative.

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How the USA is failing - and doesn't even know it

2005-03-04T22:38:00.000-08:00

I read this interesting compilation of stats about the USA ranked in terms of different categories, and they were really surprising to say the least.

Some samples from this website:

The World Health Organization "ranked the countries of the world in terms of overall health performance, and the U.S. [was]...37th." In the fairness of health care, we're 54th. "The irony is that the United States spends more per capita for health care than any other nation in the world" (The European Dream, pp.79-80). Pay more, get lots, lots less.
"The U.S. and South Africa are the only two developed countries in the world that do not provide health care for all their citizens" (The European Dream, p.80). Excuse me, but since when is South Africa a "developed" country? Anyway, that's the company we're keeping.
Lack of health insurance coverage causes 18,000 unnecessary American deaths a year. (That's six times the number of people killed on 9/11.) (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005.)
"U.S. childhood poverty now ranks 22nd, or second to last, among the developed nations. Only Mexico scores lower" (The European Dream, p.81). Been to Mexico lately? Does it look "developed" to you? Yet it's the only "developed" country to score lower in childhood poverty.
Twelve million American families--more than 10 percent of all U.S. households--"continue to struggle, and not always successfully, to feed themselves." Families that "had members who actually went hungry at some point last year" numbered 3.9 million (NYT, Nov. 22, 2004).
The United States is 41st in the world in infant mortality. Cuba scores higher (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005).
Women are 70 percent more likely to die in childbirth in America than in Europe (NYT, Jan. 12, 2005).
The leading cause of death of pregnant women in this country is murder (CNN, Dec. 14, 2004).
"Of the 20 most developed countries in the world, the U.S. was dead last in the growth rate of total compensation to its workforce in the 1980s.... In the 1990s, the U.S. average compensation growth rate grew only slightly, at an annual rate of about 0.1 percent" (The European Dream, p.39). Yet Americans work longer hours per year than any other industrialized country, and get less vacation time.
"Sixty-one of the 140 biggest companies on the Global Fortune 500 rankings are European, while only 50 are U.S. companies" (The European Dream, p.66). "In a recent survey of the world's 50 best companies, conducted by Global Finance, all but one were European" (The European Dream, p.69).

The Philippines has a new Big Brother: China

2005-03-02T18:55:00.000-08:00

As China emerges as the new power in the area, it has started to form alliances with other Asian countries who formerly were antagonistic to it. In a new development, China is not only granting the Philippines economic "gifts", it is also providing some military support and technological support as well. Interestingly enough, the report notes that "thanks to Chinese technological support, the Philippines will attain rice and corn self-sufficiency by 2006 and 2010."

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China has pledged military assistance for the Philippines for the first time, underscoring its rising influence in a region traditionally dominated by the United States.

China had promised 10 million yuan ($1.2 million) worth of equipment, including engineering hardware, a source with knowledge of the deal said.

"We in the Philippines welcome China's increasing role in regional and international affairs," visiting Philippine Foreign Secretary Alberto Romulo said in a speech on Wednesday to mark the 30th anniversary of diplomatic relations.

Romulo on Tuesday ratified a memorandum of understanding on defence cooperation signed last November, an embassy official said.

"China is the new big brother...but the U.S. factor still remains," the source, who requested anonymity, told Reuters.

A Philippine delegation, led by the environment and trade secretaries, held a mining roadshow in Beijing in January and said it had won investment pledges in nickel and other mining projects worth $1.3 billion. The Philippines posted a trade surplus of $4.79 billion with China last year, with exports jumping 43.6 percent to $9.06 billion and imports surging 38 percent to $4.27 billion.

Thanks to Chinese technological support, the Philippines will attain rice and corn self-sufficiency by 2006 and 2010.

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Why China is not Japan

2005-03-01T19:52:00.000-08:00

In the 1980s and early 1990s, there was the notion that Japan would somehow become a "superpower" in more than the economic sense - that it would somehow overtake the USA and we would all become part of Pax Nippon.

I didn't buy it. Not for one second, as I used to argue with friends of mine when in college at the time.

Why? Because of a multitude of reasons, some of which I'll summarize here briefly.

First, Japan has NEVER ever been a global "superpower", not even in the early days of the last century when they were the pre-eminent asian power, nor in previous centuries.

Secondly, and very importantly, Japan has only half the population of the USA (and thus roughly half the GNP of the USA), and in today's interconnected world, population size is one big arbiter of international influence. It also places a limit on the ultimate size of the Japanese domestic market, a very important limit, which means it is highly dependent on foreign markets as targets for export in order to power its growth.

Thirdly, because of the legacy of its defeat in WW2, Japan does not wield an international political and military influence commensurate with its economic power. It is rightly seen as simply a US ally in asia, a cog in the american chain of influence. This dependence on the USA limits the heights to which Tokyo can aspire to in the international arena.

China is different from japan because it suffers none of these limitations.

China was the most advanced nation on earth for a very long time prior to 500 years ago, and it produced a very large chunk of the total industrial output of the world at the time (followed by India). The perception of China as the Middle Kingdom, the center of the world, was not simply a conceit but a reality for centuries, before it made the mistake in the 1500s AD of scrapping its huge fleets and turning inward.

China has about 3-4 times the population of the USA, so even if China only matches Japan's rise, it will be a country with 3-4 x the economy of the USA! Its large population also means China can support a very large domestic market, unlike Japan, and is thus less dependent on the whims of foreign markets. Furthermore, the very large consumer markets of China means that foreign companies (and their home countries) will in turn become dependent on China and its consumer and industrial markets. This, again, is something that Japan never had - the ability to make multinationals beg!

China also, unlike Japan, has a growing political influence that spans the globe and is not hindered by the perception that it is simply the "ally" of a greater power. Indeed, China is increasingly seen as a huge counterweight to the USA, as events in Venezuela, Cuba, the EU, and others show.

People may think that the rise of China is somehow something that may (or may not) happen in the future - certainly they may ask why China might not be just another Japan.

But I ask: Look around and see...even at this low point in its economic trajectory:

China ALREADY has the largest consumer markets for many industrial (e.g. cement, steel) and consumer (e.g. wireless phones, TVs, DVDs, PCs) products.....

China ALREADY is the main growth market (or soon to be main market) for many multinationals, who are dependent on China for their own survival or growth....

China ALREADY is the most attractive destination for foreign direct investment, eclipsing the USA in 2003....

China ALREADY has the second largest number of internet users (soon to be the largest because of its very fast growth rate) and it has one of the most advanced IT infrastructures in the world, with broadband access growing by leaps and bounds and available to the population even in very remote areas at low prices....

China ALREADY is gobbling up the raw materials of the world in order to power its growth, from oil through cement (55% of cement in the world goes to China!).....

China ALREADY has one of the most amazing transportation infrastructures in Asia or the world and it has just began (around 4, 600 KM of expressway is being added each year!).....

China ALREADY is a leader in many technological fields, from supercomputers (it has some of the fastest supercomputers in the world) to biotechnology (thousands of biotech patents are starting to be filed internationally and locally by Chinese companies)......

China ALREADY has one of the fastest growing and largest industrial production capabilities in the world.....

China is THE fastest growing major economy in the world by a significant margin and over an incredible time span of the last couple decades, so much so that the Chinese govt is actually trying to SLOW growth in order to prevent a bubble.....

and so on and so forth....

We're not awaiting a resurgent China, coming back to reclaim its position after 500 years, we're ALREADY in the thick of the paradigm shift!

Internet users in China to grow from 94 million to 134 million this year

2005-02-28T22:40:00.000-08:00

It's a wired, wired world, indeed, as China consolidates its position as the #2 wired country in the world after the USA. Because of its faster growth rate and larger size, China will probably become the #1 wired nation pretty darn soon.

The latest numbers for the USA: 198 million Internet users as of Nov/04, 66.8% penetration, Nielsen//NR.

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The figure, reported Monday by the Xinhua state news agency, would mark growth of nearly 28 percent from 94 million at the end of 2004 and consolidate China's position as the second largest market in the world after the United States.

The Ministry of Information Industry, which made the prediction, seems slightly more conservative than some non-government analysts.

Independent forecaster Analysys International said earlier this year it expected the total number of Internet users in China to reach 134 million by late 2005.

China's online population has grown rapidly in recent years from just 620,000 in 1997.

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UPS looks to China for continues growth

2005-02-28T20:52:00.000-08:00

Again and again, the same situation manifests itself. A foreign company, its growth stagnating in the home market, turns to China and its rapidly expanding consumer industry to drive future growth.

As multinationals become more dependent on China, so too do the home country's of those companies become dependent on this rising dragon.

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The world's largest package-delivery service, United Parcel Service Inc., is looking to China's burgeoning logistics market to drive growth for its earnings as the company's home market in the United States stagnates, a company official says.

"Our plan in China is really aggressive," said Daniel Chen, managing director for strategic planning and development for UPS in China.

UPS's expansion in China follows a banner year for the company's China operations in 2004, when its export volume in the market doubled, reflecting the country's surging economy.

Chen expects business volume from China to grow at a faster rate in 2005 than in previous years.

"We grew 100 percent last year while growth in the year before was between 50 percent and 60 percent," Chen said.

"So if you take that trend and project it onto this year, the growth could be as high as 200 percent," he said.

Chen said UPS' future expansion in China may involve acquisitions of either international or local companies.

His bullish outlook for China contrasts with the firm's sluggish operating environment in its home market, the United States, where the company makes the bulk its revenue. UPS reported a mere 1.3 percent on-year rise in fourth-quarter earnings from its overall operations, down from 20 percent in the third quarter, due to competitive pressures.

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Why has China done much better than India?

2005-02-28T12:16:00.000-08:00

A common theme in my musings is one that is at first anathema to the usual beliefs - that democracy equals a better society, at least in terms of materialistic pursuits. My main argument is that the development of a market capitalistic system is the main arbiter of this, not democracy per se.

A common example I cite is India versus China - whereas one is a chaotic multi-party democracy (India), the other is a limited one-party state (China). While the two countries are indeed historical giants even in near-recent times (Even in 1820, China generated about a third of world output - measured at common international prices - and India about another 16 per cent, while the two generated almost all world industrial output in earlier history), they have both wallowed until about the 1970s, when both countries suddenly started developing at a more rapid pace.

Interestingly enough, the more democratic nation (india) has lagged significanly behind the one-party state (China) in terms of almost all measures in improving its citizens' lives.

In this new article, the author looks in detail at the question of why India has fallen far behind China, and what the future may hold for both countries.

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Both are the heirs of great civilisations. But China's civilisation is inseparable from its state, while India's is inseparable from its social structure, above all from the role of caste.

This difference permeates the two countries' histories and contemporary performance. As Lord Desai of the London School of Economics has noted, “for India, the problem [is] achieving unity in diversity”. China, however, is a “unitary hard state, which can pursue a single goal with determination and mobilise maximal resources in its achievement”.*

These political and social differences explain, in large measure, the contrasts between the two development strategies. China has largely replicated the growth pattern of the other east Asian success stories, though its financial system is still weaker and its economy more open to foreign direct investment than those of Japan and South Korea. Its growth is based on high savings, massive investment in infrastructure, universal basic education, rapid industrialisation, an increasingly deregulated labour market and an internationally open and competitive economy.

India's pattern of growth has been extraordinarily different, indeed in many ways unique: it has been service-based and apparently jobless. Savings are far lower than in China, as is investment in infrastructure. India's industrialisation has hardly begun. Literacy is low, while elite education is well developed. India's formal labour market is among the most regulated in the world. Regulations and relatively high protection against imports continue to restrict competition in the domestic market.

China has accepted both growth and social transformation. India welcomes growth but tries to minimise social dislocation. The Chinese state sees development as both its goal and the foundation of legitimacy. Indian politicians see the representation of organised interests as their goal and the foundation of their legitimacy. Chinese politics are developmental, while India's remain predominantly clientelist.

It is not difficult, therefore, to see why China's growth has been far higher than India's. China has not only saved and invested far more, it has exploited, to a far greater degree, the opportunities afforded by the global economy. Its population is also more skilled, while the social and economic transformation it has embraced is more profound.

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The New Era of Economic Warfare

2005-02-26T22:19:00.000-08:00

When two states are nuclear armed, then the only option for competition is in the economic realm. Thus, the rapid strides China is making in developing its economy does not bode well for the USA, which is drowning in debt, has an economic growth rate 1/3 that of China (even though China is actually trying to SLOW its growth), and whose currency is currently being slowly replaced as the unchallenged reserve int he world. Not to mention the USA is wasting its economic resources in an unwinnable "War on Terror" and a misplaced and stupid Iraq War.

Make no mistake, continuing to cling to the idea that the only economic strength of China is in its manufacturing base is outmoded thinking. The Chinese industrial and consumer market has grown so large that in many ways it is now larger than the USA market, even though China is still at the low point of its economic trajectory! As examples, GE declared it now has sales of $5 BILLION in china, while Nokia noted that China would pass the USA as its number one market in 2-3 years.

The USA "defeated" the USSR because of its strong economy, not because of its military. In the same way, China threatens to do to the USA what the USA did to USSR. The sad thing is that american corporations are at the vanguard of those willing to jump on the China boat.

Is China the New Economic Imperialist in Africa?

2005-02-25T08:54:00.000-08:00

The rise of China as an economic superpower is not only changing Asia, Europe, and the Americas, but it is also increasingly affecting African nations, which have become recipients of grant and aid money from an energy-hungry China, and whose consumer markets have become dominated by Chinese goods.

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ANYONE travelling around Africa cannot have failed to notice the growing presence of Chinese business and companies. This invasion from the east represents something of a double-edged sword for Africans. All over Africa, Chinese companies are doing lucrative deals with governments, many of them with major "sweeteners" thrown in - designed to clinch not just the contract being negotiated, but others down the line.

For example, in Kenya last month, China's largest listed telecoms manufacturer, ZTE Communications, made a "gift" of equipment worth 144-million Kenyan shillings to Telkom Kenya. ZTE said the company would "continue to play a positive role in Kenya's telecommunications industry". After a gesture like that, it's certain to get a role. Investment company China Export and Credit Insurance Corporation plans to invest $7bn in Nigeria, China's third-largest African trading partner after SA and Egypt, to fund projects in a range of sectors, including oil.

China is slowly widening its African oil footprint, with big contracts in Sudan and Angola. But it has sold itself to the Nigerian government by agreeing to invest large sums in nonoil sectors in what analysts see as leverage to secure the oil stake.
Zimbabwe is all but owned by China, say many Africa watchers. When President Robert Mugabe saw his biggest critics were also his biggest trading partners and tourism markets, he defensively turned to the east, lauding countries such as China as the true partners of Zimbabwe. In return for a rare hand of friendship in an increasingly hostile world, Mugabe has offered Chinese companies almost anything they want, regardless of the payback.

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Is China hindering standardization by adopting home-grown standards?

2005-02-25T08:22:00.000-08:00

China has been making waves recently over its official adoption of home-grown standards. First, there was anxiety in India over China's looming decision on whether to adopt its own homegrown 3G (third generation) mobile technology, TD-SCDMA (time division synchronous code division multiple access), which would be against the US-backed CDMA 2000 and Europe-backed Wideband CDMA (W-CDMA). Now, China has officially adopted the home-grown EVD standard for DVD. The moves are widely seen as a way to avoid paying royalties to foreign patent holders.

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China’s Ministry of Information Industry (MII) announced on its Chinese-language website on February 23 the adoption of the domestically developed EVD (enhanced versatile disc) as a national DVD-player standard.

MII intends EVD to be a guideline for China-based makers in their development and production of ICs, software, discs and players for high-definition digital video entertainment. MII also intends EVD to be a means of freeing Chinese makers from having to pay DVD royalties to the 3C alliance and the 6C alliance, the local media Xinhua Online pointed out. A number of China-based makers of DVD players, including Amoi Electronics, Nanjing Panda Electronics and SVA Information Industry, are paying a royalty of US$10 per exported DVD player to the two groups of patent owners, Xinhua Online noted.

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EU chooses China over US

2005-02-24T19:52:00.000-08:00

The decision by the EU to go ahead with arms sales to China despite vigorous objections from the USA had much to do with economics - the Chinese economy is the fastest growing consumer market in the world and China is the EU's #1 trading partner, not the USA.

However, a interesting statement at the end of this news summary explains in a nutshell one reason for the decision:

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The Economist also offers its take on France's motivation for lifting the embargo and increasing trade ties with China. It's not just about the money.

For the French, wider ideological issues come into play. Mr Chirac is the strongest proponent of replacing American hegemony with a "multipolar world". On a visit to Beijing last October he declared that France and China shared "a common vision of the world – a multipolar world."

Lifting the embargo would "mark a significant milestone: a moment when Europe had to make a choice between the strategic interests of America and China – and chose China."

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GE sales of $5 Billion in China!

2005-02-23T23:16:00.000-08:00

GE is one of the many multinationals that have profited from an exploding Chinese consumer market. The company reported it would have sales of $5 billion this year in the world's fastest growing market, a fivefold rise since 2001!

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General Electric Co. is forecasting $5 billion of sales in China this year, a fivefold rise since 2001, as the world's second-biggest company benefits from expansion in the fastest-growing major economy.

``We're very profitable in China,'' Steven J. Schneider, president and chief executive office of the company's Asia- Pacific region, said in an interview in Beijing. ``We see double- digit growth across all sectors in China. China is full of opportunities for GE.''

Schneider and other GE executives were in the Chinese capital today to tout the company's sponsorship of China's National Figure Skating Team ahead of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. It's part of Chief Executive Jeffrey Immelt's strategy to raise the company's name recognition in its biggest and fastest- growing market, where GE sells rail and power equipment, airline engines, consumer finance and other goods and services.

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One Major Reason EU is pandering to China: Bush

2005-02-23T21:55:00.000-08:00

If ever there was one person China can thank for hastening the rise of the Chinese, it is George Bush the younger (aka. Bush the Noodlehead). By focusing on his unwinnable "War on terror" and illegally invading Iraq, exhausting the already-weakened resources of the USA and its falling dollar, Bush single-handedly vaulted the importance of China to the rest of the world, which wants to contain the renegade U.S. president.

Just how unpopular is Bush? He's being called the #1 Terrorist by protesters in Germany, where he is visiting:

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February 24, 2005, 05:45

About 12 000 protesters, many carrying banners reading "Bush go home", "No 1 Terrorist" and "Warmonger", marched through the German city of Mainz yesterday, but were mostly kept away from the visiting US president. The official rally, which was twice as big as expected, never got within earshot of George W Bush, the US president, but a small group of protestors rushed towards his car as he left to visit a US base in nearby Wiesbaden. Police wrestled several demonstrators to the ground and led them away in handcuffs, a witness said.

Bush was visiting Germany for the first time since the 2003 Iraq war, which Gerhard Schroeder, the German chancellor, and most Germans opposed. "I'm disgusted by the war in Iraq Bush started that has cost thousands of civilian lives," said Thomas Odenweller (49) a computer technician. "Now he's trying to normalise relations with Europe. It must be stopped", he added.

Ignoring snow and freezing temperatures, the demonstrators held banners chastising Bush in English with slogans such as: "You can bomb the world to pieces but not into peace." Many had pre-printed posters reading: "Bush, No 1 Terrorist". Before the march, which Mainz police said was one of the largest ever in the city of about 300 000, one speaker told the crowd: "Mr. Bush, please leave our country. You started an illegal war against Iraq."

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China continues to throw money around in search of energy

2005-02-23T20:13:00.000-08:00

As China's wealth rises, so too does its propensity to grant money to other countries, many being "friendship" type loans and grants, but others being thinly-veiled pushes to tap and secure the other country's energy reserves, which China is using in prodigious amounts in its rapid modernization program.

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Kenya will get a Sh200 million grant from China for projects to be identified jointly by the two governments.

The two countries signed two technical and economic co-operation agreements yesterday to support economic recovery programmes under the Ministry of Planning and National Development.

Under technical co-operation, China will assist Kenya, through the Ministry of Energy, to intensify oil and gas exploration.

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Nokia says China to overtake USA as largest market for Nokia in 3 years

2005-02-23T08:01:00.000-08:00

The rapid ascent of China as the top consumer market for many foreign companies continues as Nokia announced that China would soon overtake the USA as the largest market for Nokia phones in the world.

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The chief executive of Nokia, the world's biggest seller of mobile telephones, said on Wednesday that he expected China to soon overtake the United States as the company's biggest market.

Sales in China currently account for 10 percent of Nokia's total revenue, second only to the United States at 13 percent, but rapid growth in coming years is likely to push China beyond that, Jorma Ollila, the chief executive, said during a visit to Beijing. "I would not be surprised to see China take up the No. 1 position in the next three years," he said.

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The New Empire Part 2

2005-02-22T21:23:00.000-08:00

At the beginning of the 20th century, people started to realize that the center of the world economy was moving from Europe to America. In the same way, the start of the 21st century has seen the rapid rise of China as the manufacturing hub of the world, and its continued rise as potentially the largest consumer market in all history.

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In 1902, Brooks Adams published THE NEW EMPIRE proclaiming how American had surpassed Europe as the center of the world economy.

"The world seems agreed that the United States is likely to achieve, if indeed she has not already achieved, an economic supremacy. The vortex of the cyclone is New York. No such activity prevails elsewhere; nowhere are undertakings so gigantic, nowhere is administration so perfect; nowhere are such masses of capital centralized in single hands. And as the United States becomes an imperial market, she stretches out along the trade routes which lead from foreign countries to her heart, as every empire has stretched out from the days of Sargon to our own," wrote Adams.

The former global Superpower, Great Britain, according to Adams is gradually assuming the position of a dependency, which must rely on us as the base from which she draws her food in peace, and without which she could not stand in war, a view borne out in the two world wars of the 20th century. Because London had adopted free trade while Washington still practiced protectionism in Adams day, American firms were able to profit greatly from their penetration of the British Empire much as the rising (reborn) empire of China is doing in the American market today.

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China engineers soft-landing?

2005-02-22T21:12:00.000-08:00

For many people, especially in countries that are trying to achieve growth, the phrase "trying to slow down the economy" seems paradoxical.

But that is exactly what China is trying to achieve in order to cool its overcharged economy, and thus create sustainable and long-term growth.

There is now new data to suggest that China is starting to get a rein on the economy.

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HONG KONG, FEB 22: China’s consumer prices rose in January at their slowest pace in more than a year, easing pressure on the central bank to raise interest rates in the world’s fastest-growing major economy. The consumer price index increased 1.9% from a year earlier after climbing 2.4% in December, the Beijing-based statistics bureau said on its website.

Improved harvests slowed gains in food prices. ‘‘Inflation pressures are easing,’’ said Liang Hong, an economist at Goldman Sachs Group Inc in Hong Kong. The central bank will probably leave its benchmark one-year lending rate at 5.58% until ‘‘the end of this year,’’ she said.

Holding off from raising rates may sustain growth in an economy that’s almost trebled in size in a decade and is now the world’s biggest buyer of meat, mobile phones and motorbikes. Economic growth unexpectedly accelerated to 9.5% in the fourth quarter, prompting policymakers to say they will keep limits on lending to auto, steel and property industries.

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China to become developed country by 2080

2005-02-19T21:55:00.000-08:00

Pretty far-fetched prognostication, but they don't call them "foolscast" for nothing!

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[World News]: Beijing, Feb 19 : China will emerge a moderately developed nation by 2050 and become one of the world's most industrialised country by 2080 due to the sustained economic advancement of the Communist giant.

China will become a "moderately developed country" before 2050 thanks to its ongoing modernisation drive, according to the 'China Modernisation Report 2005', released at a seminar organised by the China Centre for Modernisation Research under the Chinese Academy of Sciences here yesterday.

The report predicts that the country's modernisation process will be upgraded in three stages to achieve this goal, the 'China Daily' reported today.

In the middle of this century, China will become a "moderately developed country" instead of simply remaining as a "primarily developed one." Around 2080, persistent economic growth will enable China to become a "developed country" and then to be in front of the world's most industrialised countries within the next two decades, experts said.

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U.S. Watches As China Woos Caribbean

2005-02-19T20:59:00.000-08:00

The growing economic might of China means that Taiwan's ability to influence smaller countries and woo them to recognize it as the one and only "China" has grown weaker.

This article notes that China has been throwing money into the USA's backyard, the Carribean, to the tune of $2 billion, in a so far successful bid to move them to the mainland Chinese orbit and away from Taiwan.

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China is waging an aggressive campaign of seduction in the Caribbean, wooing countries away from relationships with rival Taiwan, opening markets for its expanding economy, promising to send tourists, and shipping police to Haiti in the first communist deployment in the Western Hemisphere.

And the United States, China's Cold War enemy, is benignly watching the Asian economic superpower move into its backyard.

For decades China and Taiwan used dollar diplomacy to win over small Caribbean nations where small projects building roads, bridges, wells and fisheries go a long way.

But Beijing's growing economic clout is tipping the scales in the region. Caribbean trade with China reached $2 billion last year, a 42.5 percent increase from 2003, the Chinese news agency Xinhua reported.

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China passes the USA as the world's largest consumer market

2005-02-19T20:47:00.000-08:00

I am a confirmed and fierce Microsoft-hater, but I have to admit Bill Gates is one smart cookie, and Warren Buffet is no slouch either. I recently posted that people should short the dollar (and buy something like the Yuan, which will inevitably rise if allowed to float) and make some money as it keeps going down, mainly because Bush the noodlehead keeps focusing on the wrong things.

Now, Bill Gates notes that he is betting on America's decline and putting his money on the rise of China. Read about it here, and about how China has just passed the USA as the largest consumer market in the world.

Bill Gates is betting on America's decline and putting his money on China's rise. Or so the Microsoft founder seemed to say last month at the World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland. "I'm short the dollar," he said. "The ol' dollar is going down."

At the same meeting, Gates linked his pessimism about the United States to optimism about China. He commended China as the great "change agent" in the world over the next 20 years and praised its "brand-new form of capitalism."

Gates isn't the only titan talking down the dollar and linking it to America's decline. Warren Buffett, Gates' friend and the world's second-richest man, has been bad-mouthing America's financial house and currency for two years. A panic in the greenback could conceivably net both men more than the cumulative lifetime earnings of thousands of their U.S. workers.

Meanwhile, China just passed the USA as the largest consumer market in the world.

WASHINGTON - China has surpassed the United States to lead the world in the consumption of basic food and industrial goods, a study says.

The booming Asian country now uses more meat, grain, steel and coal, according to an environmental think-tank's report released Wednesday.

The only basic commodity still consumed in greater quantities by Americans is oil, says the report from the Washington-based Earth Policy Institute.

The Chinese have even eclipsed Americans in consumer goods, buying more refrigerators, more televisions and cell phones.

"China is no longer just a developing country. It is an emerging economic superpower, one that is writing economic history," writes the institute's president, Lester Brown. "If the last century was the American century, this one looks to be the Chinese century."

Welcome

2005-02-19T20:12:00.000-08:00

Thank you for visiting this small corner of the web. My name is kalimantan, welcome!

This blog will feature lots of daily links to stories highlighting the sudden return of China as the future dominant power in the world, as well as my thoughts and opinions on how China's growing economic, political, and military rise affects the rest of the world.