badwolf wrote:
You are too pessimistic to China's future.
Inland CHina is hardly to be affected by the crisis while inland china has 60%+ of china's population.
Badwolf,
You know massaging data with selective quoting of facts is a useful procedure when you want to paint a rosy picture.
However, you need to be careful where you do this data massaging. It should be on one of the message board of magazines like Business Week, Time etc where the majority of the Western folk don't know where Shanghai is located on the Chinese map.
Don't try that here.
Now to get back to statistics. Sure 60% of China's population (actually much higher but never mind)
which do not live on the southern coast line are hardly affected by the crisis.
You know why. Unfortunately for you many folks on BRF also know why. That's because they were dirt poor to begin with and so can't get any more poorer now. Right now I don't have the time to dig up the up to date stats but according to China's own figures for 2007 Shanghai's per capita was around $2,500 while the per capita in some northern towns/cities were in the region of US$500. An we're not even talking about poor farmers whose farmlands have either been polluted or taken away. My guess is their per capita would be very Sub-Saharan US$200 or thereabouts.
(India does not have that kind of disparity in per capita income among different regions.)
That has resulted in the biggest internal migration in a country in recorded history. Surely you didn't miss that did you?
But all that is just statistics and that too based on what the Chinese government is releasing. It could be accurate or more likely could be totally wacko.
However, the point that is being repeatedly being made on this thread and which you, Wrdos and other Chinese visitors seem simply incapable of grasping (I wonder why?) is not whether India is growing faster or China is growing faster. Or to put in another way, whether China is less affected by this economic crisis or India is.
The point that is being made is that both are affected and are facing probably the biggest crisis since they started on their liberalization journey - China in 1978 and India in 1992 (I hope you notice that there's a decade of difference in starting time - a lot can happen in a decade, the one in front of us, not the 78-92 period).
China's social structure, thanks to a communist dictatorship which increasingly resembles the robber barons about which Commies used to shout about in the 1960s and 1970s, is much more vulnerable to social upheavals that could occur due to millions losing their jobs.
In India, thanks to a robust democracy, there's an exit valve which releases the pressure. One such pressure release will come in April when the elections will be held and, most probably, the present dispensation will be booted out and a new party/grouping will come to power and will enjoy the goodwill of the people for about 2 years or so (that's standard in India) and by that time it's likely that things will start to improve.
Now does the political leadership in China have the wherewithal of pretending that its business as usual as this current crisis drags on for almost two years - with a fat U shaped recovery - as most analysts are suggesting?
Also note we on BRF know that there's not going to be a revolution with the CCP being booted out if things really get bad. However what's likely to happen in that the hardline PLA backed old guard will stage an internal coup and get rid of the pro-reformers and then announce a series of ill-advised iron-bowl measures.
Will the fragile factory-of-the-world model which China has created survive such a move? (Even if there's no coup it's doubtful if the factory of the world model will survive once all the major economies recover. There's going to be fundamental shift in the way we do business but that's outside the scope of this post).
That's the point to look out for. Not mines bigger than yours analysis of economic data which you guys are doing. (Incidentally read Kamasutra, the Indians knew thousands of years ago size doesn't matter, its how you use it that matters!
)
Remember that for the 5,000 ++ years old Indic and Chinese civilizations, the last 30 years or the next 50 are just drops in the ocean. For much of recorded history these two countries dominated the globe economically and culturally.
In less than 50 years that equilibrium will be re-established (unless of course your pet dog on our western border really gets rabies and bites us, in which case we'll kill the dog and go after it's master, thus distorting the course of history again). If you guys try to prevent India from reaching it's destiny, you'll end by not fulfilling yours either because you'll have to spend too much energy and effort to stop the elephant.
Think about that bad wolf while you lick you paws as you warm yourself at the BRF campfire.
Cheers!