China, Inc
Just finishing up this book. Real interesting. The gist of it revolves around two things. One is that they have so many poor people that are willing to work for next to nothing that they can make anything they decide to make for much less than anyone in the world can. The other is that they represent such a huge market for other countries products (they have 1.5 billion people) that no country can afford to tick them off and countries make crazy concessions to them (like giving them patent rights to products that the companies are producing in China) to get access to this market. It's pretty fascinating for a communist country. They basically have a very entrepreunerial market economy that developed in spite of all the communist government influence. Part of the reason their economy is so vibrant is that entrepreneurs learned to be creative as they skirted all the government rules against capitalism to turn it into a market economy. Then the government woke up and saw it was a great thing for their country and embraced it. It doesn't seem there is a lot of state run industry left, it's mostly privately owned and operated.
A couple other random insights:
Their economy grows at a rate of 7-9% per year. It's a great year when ours grows at 4%.
If their standard of living doubled (which would still leave it lower than Botswana's standard of living) the size of their economy would equal that of the United States.
Stuff that was marked 'Made in China' used to be all crap. Not so anymore. Most of it is apparently high quality stuff and China is the reason we can by DVD players for $30 and we can buy quality electronics at Wal-Mart cheaper than anywhere else. Wal-Mart does lots of business in China.
They have basically no pollution regulations and their killing their environment.
They have one labor union, it's state run, and it doesn't seem like it does anything because the farmers are literally dirt poor and all migrating to the cities so they can be just a little less poor working in a factory for next to nothing.
Because the farmers are moving to the city, and the ones who are left don't have the knowledge/technology that we do, and because they are developing a lot of their farmland into industrial centers, and because they have 1.5 billion people who need to eat... they're always going to need to get food from elsewhere, and that is mainly us.
Their middle class is 100 million people. It didn't say what the lower class was but I would assume the upper class is much, much smaller than the middle class, leaving about 1.4 billion people in the lower class. Seems like that would be a problem to me.
They have a $500 billion reserve of US dollars to spend on whatever companies, oil supplies, real estate, etc. that they decide they want.
Their military is not very advanced, but that will probably change, in part because of that $500 billion reserve. The author did not forsee some big showdown between the US and China though, because our economies are increasingly interdependent.
They graduate 235,000 new engineers every year. We graduate 45,000. We're 5x smaller as a country, so that's an equal proportion, but still a concerning thought.
Curious, is anybody worried about their job going to China?
posted by jeff @ 1:04 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
Yes, I live in constant fear that my job will move to China. Constant fear...
you should be more worried about your job going to the democrats...
Check out another country and another economic approach at http://www.keepmedia.com/pubs/Newsweek/2006/10/23/1907981?ba=a&bi=10&bp=64
We are fortunate to have landed in this country-have a job- have food on our tables- have the opportunity to vote for the leader of our country. God did not create the USA in 7 days- he created the WORLD. From an economic stand point Macro-economics is more about treating others as we would want to be treated Republican Democrat American Chinese Swedish. So do you boycott Walmart in outrage or realize that you are removing the opportunity for a destitute farmer to double his income with a factory job? It's not so black and white. Every generation of every country desires better for future generations Republican Democrat American Chinese Swedish. Why can't we all just get along?
Thanks for letting some anonymous respondant share a view. I sat on the edge of a desert today- in a Starbucks of all places. I was joined by a homeless lady who carried on a conversation with an invisible guest could not see. At the far end of the cafe two nurses chatted about the politics of the hospital that they worked in and how they had lost status on the job. I noticed all three ladies had polished their nails and had remarkably clean shoes. I so want the homeless woman to have a bed to sleep in. The nurses have their two story homes and college degrees. They have all the opportunities and probably never saw the homeless woman who sat down next to me. If hurt, do we all not cry- if cut, do we all not bleed- if we have no food, are we all not hungry- if Godless, are we all not lost?
Regarding the entrepreneurial comment, the Chinese culture has ALWAYS been entrepreneurial. Communism can't change thousands of years of culture, it's just a different facade.
For Christians, life varies depending on the province you live in. There is the government-sanctioned church (Three-Self Church), and the underground house church. Some provinces allow house churches to worship openly. Others not so. Some "Three-Self" Churches preach the gospel, straight-up. Others preach a watered-down "safe" version. Some "Three-Self" pastors are genuine evangelists. Some are government agents who report to The Party.
What's amazing is that there IS a government-sanctioned Christian church. There's no need to smuggle Bibles into the country because they're printed and available through government churches. Twenty years ago this would have been unheard of.
China is not a country to be approached with fear in the current geopolitical climate. Christians in America need to learn to engage other cultures and countries, because to fail to do so would be to miss the open doors that are appearing due to economic interdependence. Have a degree from a seminary? Sorry, getting into China won't be so easy. On the other hand, have a competitive job skill? Welcome to China, or any other country where the work force is being upgraded.
God is always at work in the WORLD. No single country is favored over one-- God is at work in ALL of them.
Interestingly enough I just finished a study of China's economy here at school. One of the issues that I discovered is that their economy may not be sustainable. So much of it predicated on being a cost leader, i.e. producing at rates lower than their competition. The issue is that some of the chinese are being exposed to western culture, and along with that they are starting to want some of those things. This is driving their cost structure up. Obviously, it is still significantly lower than a US company's structure, but the fear is that it will exceed that of other countries soon. Thought it was kind of interesting, but again, I am a dork.
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