Friday, March 24, 2006
CHINA
Approaching a Crossroads?
When I visited China last November, I was blown away by many things; the scale of everything (Big!), all the construction, the apparent affluence of the cities, and of course the pollution. China's economy has been growing at around 9% for the last 10 years or so. It's plowing into the ranks of the largest economies in the world (but thanks to its huge population its per capital GDP is still lowish) and if you believe the media, nothing can stop this march. I'm not so sure.
One thing that struck me was of course the incredible air pollution. From Beijing to Xi'an to Shanghai the skys are a hazy grey. Even flying between these cities (which would approximate flying from Philly (Beijing) to St. Louis (Xi'an) to Atlanta (Shanghai) views of the countryside we obscured by a hazy smog. If China is to continue to grow, it's going to have to do what Europe and the United States have had to do, invest in environmental technology (e.g.-scrubbers for coal power plants, etc.). That's going to raise costs....and the shortage of highly skilled workers is likely to dampen their incredible labor cost advantage.
Anyway, these issues and more are discussed in this interesting article.
When I visited China last November, I was blown away by many things; the scale of everything (Big!), all the construction, the apparent affluence of the cities, and of course the pollution. China's economy has been growing at around 9% for the last 10 years or so. It's plowing into the ranks of the largest economies in the world (but thanks to its huge population its per capital GDP is still lowish) and if you believe the media, nothing can stop this march. I'm not so sure.
One thing that struck me was of course the incredible air pollution. From Beijing to Xi'an to Shanghai the skys are a hazy grey. Even flying between these cities (which would approximate flying from Philly (Beijing) to St. Louis (Xi'an) to Atlanta (Shanghai) views of the countryside we obscured by a hazy smog. If China is to continue to grow, it's going to have to do what Europe and the United States have had to do, invest in environmental technology (e.g.-scrubbers for coal power plants, etc.). That's going to raise costs....and the shortage of highly skilled workers is likely to dampen their incredible labor cost advantage.
Anyway, these issues and more are discussed in this interesting article.
