China's Time Bombs
Another tie-in to our piece on China's Stresses, Goals, Military Buildups... and Futures. Dave Schuler has been a long-time commenter here at Winds.
China's economic growth has been phenomenal. Since 1979 China's GDP has grown by 8-10% each and every year. According to the World Bank, China's purchasing power parity gross national income per capita in 1978 was $340. By 2000 China's PPP GNI per capita was $3,920 and it continues to rise. China has entered the international middle class.
China's remarkable growth has not come without cost. China is an enormous country with a population of one-sixth of humanity, its problems are commensurately huge, and some of these problems are so pressing that they won't wait for a solution. In a series of posts on these, China's Time Bombs, I've attempted to give the reader a hint of the scope and significance of some of these problems:
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- The second post in the series addressed the graying of China. As others have put it, China will become old before China becomes rich.
- The third post in the series expands on the explanation by noting the problems with China's pension system (or lack of a pension system). There's a parallel here to the discussion of our Social Security system in the USA, but the implications for China are vastly more serious.
- The fourth post in the series scratches the surface of the problems in China's banking industry. It's hard to overstate the importance of this time bomb since a sound credit system will be critical if China is to sustain its growth.
In the next post in the series I plan to suggest that China's current economic strategy is not sustainable. And in the final post in the series I'll try to wrap it all together and suggest what China's failure or success in dealing with these problems may mean to the rest of the world.
« ok, I'm done now
