Well, I guess this is where I get controversial, at least a bit. There are others who have predicted that China was in for a tough ride over the past few years, but they mostly got ignored, or were proven wrong by events. And, to a certain extent, if you cry doom long enough you'll always get proved right, given the laws of entropy. So this is a bit 'faux' controversy...
This is the introductory note taking exercise for a Pestle analysis of China, drawn on conventional internet sources such as Wikipedia, the CIA World Factbook and Nationmaster. China is the most populous country in the world, with 1.34 billion people. It has the third largest GDP, with $4.84 trillion, behind Japan and the U.S. Like India, the currency and conditions make it useful to look at some statistics using Purchasing Power Parity, which bumps up China's GDP to $7.8 trillion, which would move it ahead of Japan. It also is the second in the world in annual military spending, although that needs a bit of context, as the world's number two spends about 15% of what the world number one (USA) spends. But with PPP, that looks like more money, and insofar as it is used to pay salaries, rather than buy Israeli rocket parts, PPP is valid in this context too.
China is badly governed by the Communist Party, and in my five-year Pestle forecast I will be making the case that misgovernance will prove to be the root cause of a downward spiral that will cost China dearly. It will mark the end of an unprecedented run of growth and opportunity that began in 1978, and for the past 25 years it has averaged 10% growth per year. The record stops this year, sadly. It really is a pity--China's growth has done more to reduce world poverty than any program, aid initiative or growth in the rest of the world combined. The moral of this story is, to get rich may be glorious, but not if you trash your house and alienate your family while doing so.
China is pouring money in to the domestic economy to keep it from going sour, accelerating infrastructure development. It will help. It is unlikely to be enough. Exports have fallen by over a quarter in the last three months, and a lot of businesses have locked their doors. Unemployment is rising rapidly, and China may end up paying poorly trained workers to dig holes and then refill them.
Last year, there were 87,000 'incidents', which in other countries would have been called protests, demonstrations or riots. China is barely keeping the lid on internal unrest, much of it caused by regional and local government corruption, turfing people out of their houses or off the farms without compensation. Again, in the deeper analysis, I will try to make the case that if you get 87,000 riots with 25 years of 10% growth, what you get during a recession may look suspiciously like revolt.
China is either first or second in emitting CO2, and the overall air pollution in China's urban centers is staggeringly bad. 16 of the 20 most polluted cities in the world are Chinese. Their water isn't so good either. They also have a problem with desertification.
There are pluses. China has 86% literacy, they lead the world in internet users, they are 4th in the world in patent applications for residents (2nd for non-residents), and have 4 of the top 100 universities in the world (and 8 of the top 500). Unlike India, they actually use half the human race (the female half) which effectively doubles their talent pool.
But it's not going to be enough, as we'll see when we dig deeper.
Great thread. China is the most populated in the world. They should give it a solution.
Posted by: custom essays | 04/12/2011 at 02:37 PM
subjective and useless piece of sh.. Not even backed by evidence. Waste of your time mate!
Posted by: Joanna | 05/01/2011 at 04:22 AM
this makes me horney
Posted by: jack barker of swanmore phone : 07727739645 | 05/16/2011 at 03:19 AM