Thursday, July 14, 2011

China leads the charge

China continues to grow at astonishingly rapid growth rates.  Malcom Maiden of The Age comments here.

If you smooth the data, IP continues to grow at around 14%, which means, if it goes on (and it prolly will), that industrial production will rise over three and a half times over the next ten years.

Sounds ridiculous?  Remember, Japanese IP grew at between 15 and 20 % from the early 1950s until the first oil shock (1973).  No reason why China shouldn't do the same.  Except pollution.  (Which is why, BTW, China is going to become a very keen member of the control-carbon-emissions mob)

The most recent piece of data which jogged the share markets higher was Q2 GDP.  Now Chinese data are a bit dodgy, everybody knows that.  All the same, if you cross-check IP with say electricity usage, freight volumes, etc. etc., whatever the exact growth rate is, the number is large.  So the Q2 yoy GDP increase of 9.5% may well in fact be somewhat lower.  Or higher.  Whatever.  It's still much much higher than in other countries.  And if true, and continued, Chinese GDP would rise 2.5 times over the next ten years.  And that would make it the world's biggest economy.

A while ago, I noticed that Wall Street had started to respond to Chinese data.  And I found that most intriguing.  The rise of China changes everything:politics, economics, the global power balance, the environment.  Whereas Europe and the US are constrained by low savings rates and high debt, China is not. Not that any of the US pollies would notice that their petty childish deliberations are irrelevant in the face of this major shift in the world's centre of gravity.  They might just let off the bomb by not raising the debt ceiling.  Sigh.  Tell me, do democracies deliberately select cretins to run themselves?

No comments:

Post a Comment