Archive for the 'China' Category

China’s Audacity in Paying Attention to the Toffler’s Three Waves

by @ Sunday, August 29th, 2010. Filed under China, High Road Economics, New Left

China 2020: Double and Quadruple Happiness

by Frank Feather

SolidarityEconomy.net via Toffler Associates

Introduction

Frank Feather is a business futurist, with a remarkably accurate 30-year forecasting track record that often defies conventional wisdom. He is ranked as one of the “Top 100 Futurists of All Time” by Macmillan’s Encyclopedia of the Future. A best-selling author and dynamic keynote speaker, Feather was born in the UK but is now based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He has consulted to companies including Ericsson, IBM, Ford, Nokia, and Shell. Continuously since 1984 he has been special adviser to China on economic modernization and market reforms, and he has seen many of his ideas implemented there. He previously worked for Barclays Bank, Toronto-Dominion Bank and CIBC.

Alvin Toffler

China’s Growth

China has a remarkable and unmatched 30-year track record of doubling and quadrupling its gross domestic product. In 1978, the country’s GDP was US$147 billion and falling, per capita income was only US$190 a year, and more than 250 million people were living in abject poverty. Adjusted for inflation, the country’s per capita output in 1977 was no higher than it had been in 1957.

Undaunted, China set itself some audacious goals. It aimed to quadruple its GDP between 1980 and 2000, something it had achieved by 1996. It then determined to double its output between 2000 and 2010. Again, the goal was achieved ahead of schedule. The country’s next goal is to quadruple GDP between 2000 and 2020 and to achieve “moderate prosperity.” China’s long-term 70-year goal, laid down in 1978, is to boost its per-capita GDP to that of medium-income countries by 2050, a goal which it will almost certainly surpass before the self-imposed deadline.

Wave-Like Economic Development

China’s overall economic strategy is simple. It is based on the “third wave” concept developed by the futurist Alvin Toffler in his book by the same title, published coincident with reforms in 1980. The book was translated into Chinese and read by every mainland Chinese politician and academic and “third wave” became part of the vocabulary. (more...)



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Eating Meat vs. Soup: China, I-Pods and the Value-Chain of the Future

by @ Sunday, August 8th, 2010. Filed under China, High Road Economics

Why Can't China Climb Up the Value Chain?

I-Pod Assembly line in China

August 05, 2010

By Liang Jun

People's Daily Online

China is to a large extent at the bottom of the value chain. Though its high GDP and export figures have aroused world envy, it is the huge multinational corporations like Apple and Toshiba that make more handsome profits.
A U.S. market research firm deconstructed an Apple iPod and studied the manufacturers, costs and profits of each of the parts and components. The final results show that for every 299 U.S. dollars made from the sale of an iPod sold in the United States, Apple makes 80 U.S. dollars, the costs of distribution and retail sales stand at 75 U.S. dollars and the other costs altogether total 144 U.S. dollars.


Out of the 144 U.S. dollars costs, for hard disk and display screen alone, added value of Japanese enterprises reached 93.39 U.S. dollars, with Toshiba accounting for the major part. The other costs include the fees of parts and components made by enterprises of the United States, Japan and South Korea as well as patent fees.
But China, which was actually responsible for the assembly of this iPod, earns a few dollars through processing.
Recently, most Chinese people felt proud upon hearing reports that China may have overtaken Japan as the world's second largest economy. But if we carefully analyze the figures of GDP and trade, we will find China is to a large extent at the bottom of the value chain.


We do not intend to inspire the public's anger toward companies like Apple and Toshiba, but a rational reader should reflect on why Apple had the lion's share of the big cake created by the iPod, while China only got the crumbs. In the context of globalization, there is no conspiracy of imperialism and no coercion of vessels and cannons. However, it is differences of status among countries in the international division of labor that cause the placement along the value chain.


In other words, Apple and Toshiba "eat meat" because they have the core technology, design and brands. We have to "eat soup," because we provide only cheap labor in the entire value chain.


Sure enough, "eating soup" is a kind of progress. Before China carried out reforms in 1978 and became the "world factory," we were isolated from the international division of labor and could not eat soup some times. Even now, many developing countries could not eat soup because they have no advantages like China in costs, size, efficiency and infrastructure.


But for China, a country with a population of 1.3 billion, which may have become the "world's second largest economy," eating soup is obviously not our ultimate goal. That's why we have to restructure and transform growth in the context of globalization. China must have its own ability to innovate, core technology and world-renowned fist-class brands.



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Reject the Old Patterns – China’s 21st Century Path

by @ Sunday, February 7th, 2010. Filed under China, Global Justice, Socialism

Poster: Oppose hegemonism, uphold world peace - maintain a foreign policy of independence and own initiative, 1983

'Three Strategies'

to Tackle the

'Three Challenges'

 

By Zheng Bijian

It is far from easy for a country of 1.3 billion population to achieve peaceful rise. During the first half of the 21st century, in particular, China faces a period of both "golden opportunity for development" and "standing out contradictions". The latter, in the field of economic and social progress, can be boiled down to "three major challenges".

The first challenge comes from resources, particularly energies. China lags behind the world in terms of per capita hold of resources; meanwhile, due to a fast developing speed yet low technical level, China's manufacturing industry is among the most energy-consuming ones in the world. The huge consumption is intensified by a large-scale shift of manufacturing bases to China. As a result resources, including energies, have been in tight supply.

The second challenge is from ecological environment. A spoiled environment caused by serious pollution, worsened ecological conditions, huge consumption of resources, and low reclamation has become a bottleneck in the sustainable development of the Chinese economy.

(more...)

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China, ‘Clean Coal’ and New Technologies

by @ Thursday, January 7th, 2010. Filed under China, Environment

World's Top Polluter

Emerges as Green

Technology Leader

 

By SHAI OSTER

BEIJING -- Dec. 15, 2009 - Xu Shisen put down the phone and smiled. That was Canada calling, explained the chief engineer at a coal-fired power plant set among knockoff antique and art shops in a Beijing suburb. A Canadian company is interested in Mr. Xu's advances in bringing down the cost of stripping out greenhouse-gas emissions from burning coal.

Engineers led by Mr. Xu are working to unlock one of climate change's thorniest problems: how to burn coal without releasing carbon into the atmosphere. China's Push for Clean Coal

Mr. Xu is part of a broader effort by China to introduce green technology to the world's fastest-growing industrial economy -- a mission so ambitious it could eventually reshape the business, just as China has done for everything from construction cranes to computers.

China looms large over the global climate summit in Copenhagen, where Chinese officials are pressing the U.S. and other rich nations to accept new curbs on their emissions and to continue to subsidize poor nations' efforts to adopt clean-energy technology. China is the world's biggest source of carbon emissions. Less understood is the way China is now becoming a source of some of the solutions.

(more...)

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Word to the Wise: China Launches New Green Industries

by @ Thursday, December 10th, 2009. Filed under China, Environment, Socialism

Chinese Leader Calls

for Development of

Environmental Industry

From Xinhua

Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang Tuesday called for advancement of environmental protection industry to strengthen a stable, coordinated and sustainable economic development.


Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang (C) visits the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences in Beijing, capital of China, Dec. 8, 2009. (Xinhua/Liu Jiansheng)

The environmental protection industry concerned aspects such as infrastructure building, equipment manufacturing and services and it should be considered as a strategic emerging industry, Li said during an inspection tour in the Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences and China National Environmental Monitoring Center.
He said as the Copenhagen conference was held currently to address the climate change, "the development of green, low carbon and recycling economy has become a global trend."

(more...)

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Skip the Gas Guzzlers, Leapfrog to the Green Car

by @ Sunday, April 5th, 2009. Filed under China, Environment, High Road Economics

 BYD electric car

China's E6 Electric Car:

Seeking a Great Leap

in Clean Transportation

By Jonathan Watts

The Guardian, UK

When BYD Auto launches one of China's first mass produced fully electric sedans later this year, it will be trying to conquer the world rather than save it. But such is the explosive growth of China's car market and thirst for petrol that the two goals are likely to become ever more synonymous.

The E6 plug-in is currently under wraps at the company's sprawling industrial complex in Shenzhen, but it will soon be at the vanguard of a company's -- and a nation's -- plans to dominate the global market for "clean-transport".

(more...)

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Red China Inc.

by @ Wednesday, March 7th, 2007. Filed under China
Fanfare at the 16th national congress of the CPCDoes Communism Work After All? By Andreas Lorenz and Wieland Wagner, Der Spiegel China is securing an ever-bigger share of the world market with the methods of a planned economy. Competitors and economists alike are astounded by the country's seemingly unstoppable march to becoming a global economic superpower. The development has left many wondering: Does communism work after all? Nine men dressed in dark tailored suits meet behind high, Red walls. Their secret meeting place in downtown Beijing is called Zhongnanhai, or "Middle and Southern Lake." Once part of the Forbidden City, Zhongnanhai was a place where emperors, concubines and eunuchs would spend their (more...)

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GLOBAL NOTES #15

by @ Monday, January 22nd, 2007. Filed under China, Globalization
Starbucks in the Forbidden Cityby Jerry Harris .Starbucks in China’s Forbidden City Starbucks Forbidden City location has been called an “affront to Chinese culture” in a protest by netizens to get the coffee shop relocated. China has 123 million people on-line where the campaign has found a home on blogs. Writes Rui Chenggang, “This is not globalization but abuse of Chinese culture.” . Tesco to use carbon labels Tesco is a UK corporation and the world’s fifth largest retail chain. It recently announced it will create an index (more...)

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A Response to Robert Weil’s “Conditions of the Working Classes in China”

by @ Wednesday, January 10th, 2007. Filed under China
31705.jpgby Stephen Philion and Chi Hua* Robert Weil’s recent (June 206) MR article on the condition of the Chinese working class has provided us with a rarely visited and lucid view of the impact of China’s turn to markets on both the economic and political decline of China’s working class. Such work, based on in-depth field interviews, can only serve as a basis for a deeper understanding of both the contradictions of China’s economic growth and potential for present and future organization in defense of China (and the world’s) working class. However, despite these laudable strengths, Weil’s article falls short at the level of analysis, which reflects that of political (more...)

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Transforming Rural China: A Visit to Modern Socialist Villages

by @ Wednesday, December 6th, 2006. Filed under China
countryside.gifby Sitaram Yechury At our request, once again, we were taken to one of the relatively less developed areas to see the levels of development and the living conditions there. The delegation spent two days in Guiyang capital city of Guizhou province in China's south west region. As stated earlier, the per capita income here is 1/10th of that in Shanghai province. In terms of natural beauty, however, this is one of the spectacular areas in China with wondrous mountainous formations and spectacular waterfalls. Given this terrain, land for agricultural operations is very difficult to come by. A local saying goes as follows, "it doesn't go more than three days without raining and you wont find more than a square meter of flat land". Apart from visiting the natural landscape and the Huangguoshu waterfalls (the highest in Asia) the delegation had the (more...)

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Green Technology to Alleviate Poverty in Western China

by @ Friday, December 1st, 2006. Filed under China
Chinawater.jpgBEIJING, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- Farmers living on the arid mountains bordering Guizhou, Sichuan and Yunnan in southwest China are being urged to consider growing a new crop from a local tree. From 2007, the Jatropha Curcas L tree, which grows wild, will be used to produce bio-diesel and prevent soil erosion. Farmers had traditionally used the tree to contain livestock and its uniquely fragranced seeds provided oil for lamps. Thanks to a United Nations project, more than 1.3 million farmers in three counties of the provinces with ethnic minorities comprising 45 percent of the population, will be extracting oil from the seeds of the Jatropha Curcas L tree to improve the ecosystem, increase their energy supply and annual incomes. Entitled "Green Poverty Reduction in China", the 8.58 million US dollar project, jointly established by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Chinese government, is targeting minority communities in ecologically fragile and remote regions of China. (more...)

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China: Market Socialism or Capitalism?

by @ Wednesday, November 1st, 2006. Filed under China, Economic Democracy
Chinese women at work today This is the second of two articles assessing classes and class struggle in China’s past and present day. Here, David Schweickart, replies to YiChing Wu's article from yesterday, which was actually an earlier exchange between them at the Global Studies Association at Depaul University in 2006. What's Wrong with China? By David Schweickart Loyola University There's plenty wrong with China, as everyone knows. --The income gap is large and widening--China's Gini coefficient, a standard measure of income inequality, is now larger than the U.S.'s. --Unemployment is rising as large numbers of state-owned enterprises shed workers, before or after they are privatized. --There are sweatshops providing the Wal-Marts of the world with cheap manufactured goods. --Corruption is rampant. --So is environmental degradation. Consider the comments of Pan Yue, China's Deputy Environmental Minister, made in a recent interview: Our raw materials are scarce, we don't have enough land and our population is constantly growing.... Cities are growing, but desert areas are expanding.... Five of the most polluted cities in the world are in China; acid rain is falling on one third of our territory; half of the water in China's seven largest rivers is completely useless, a quarter of our citizens lack access to clean drinking water. With so many things wrong, China must be capitalist, right? Much of the Left thinks so, seeing China hell-bent on self-destruction, a trajectory that can only be remedied by a genuinely proletarian revolution. See, for example, Barbara Foley's "From Situational Dialectics to Pseudo-Dialectics: Mao, Jiang and Capitalist Transition, " published in Cultural Logic (2002), or Martin Hart-Landsberg and Paul Burkett's "China and Socialism: Market Reforms and Class Struggle," a special issue of Monthly Review (July-August 2004) that was subsequently published in book form, or Robert Weil's "Conditions of the Working Class in China," a lengthy manuscript now circulating on the internet. (more...)

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Classes, Class Struggle, and China’s Future

by @ Tuesday, October 31st, 2006. Filed under China, Economic Democracy
This is the first on two articles assessing Old and New in China classes and class struggle in China's past and present day. The second, an exchange with Yi Ching Wu by David Schweickart, will appear tomorrow. Yesterday's Class Enemy: Class Ideology and the Politics of the Cultural Revolution By Yi Ching Wu University of Chicago It is not so much of an exaggeration to say that the Cultural Revolution was all about class-it was, in any case, officially self-defined as “a great revolution in which one class overthrows another.” The notion of class framed the experiences and practices of hundreds of millions of Chinese people. Class and class struggle constituted the very political framework of the movement, and defined its main objectives. A highly elaborate vocabulary of class pervaded the everyday life of the entire Chinese population. But what did it really mean to talk about “class” during the Cultural Revolution? What was the meaning of “class struggle,” and who were its primary targets? These apparently innocuous questions have no self-evident answers. In the contemporary Chinese context, the meanings of such political terms as “class,” “class struggle,” and “revolution” have been largely evacuated. They belong to this class of words which, by virtue of having been used so much and so often, have come to mean almost completely nothing at all. Yet these are by no means trivial questions. My purpose of probing the meaning and character of class politics during the Cultural Revolution is to explore two broad questions with regard to the internal complexity as well as the historical significance of the Cultural Revolution. First, in what sense was the Cultural Revolution cultural? And second, to what extent was it revolutionary? (more...)

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China’s New Left Calls for a Social Alternative

by @ Tuesday, October 17th, 2006. Filed under China
Tiananmen SquareOne day earlier this year I met Wang Hui at the Thinker's Cafe near Tsinghua University in Beijing, where he teaches. A small, compact man with streaks of gray in his short hair and a pleasant face that always seems ready to break into a smile, he arrived, as he would to all our subsequent meetings, on an old-fashioned bicycle, dressed in dark corduroys, a suede jacket and a black turtleneck.Co-editor of China's leading intellectual journal, Dushu (Reading), and the author of a four-volume history of Chinese thought, Wang, still in his mid- 40s, has emerged as a central figure among a group of writers and academics known collectively as the New Left. New Left intellectuals advocate a "Chinese alternative" to the neoliberal market economy, one that will guarantee the welfare of the country's 800 million (more...)

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Socialism Is Alive and Well… in Vietnam

by @ Saturday, October 14th, 2006. Filed under China, Economic Democracy
Intel in VietnamVietnam is mentioned in the news quite often these days. But the references are almost always in relation to Iraq. What's not being covered is what's going on in Vietnam itself -- which is unfortunate, because economically, politically and socially, it might just be the most interesting and inspiring nation on the planet.In the interest of full disclosure, my affection for Vietnam goes way back. As an anti-war activist I met with Vietnamese liaisons to the anti-war movement on several occasions. In 1970 I visited Hanoi and was profoundly impressed with the character and resolve of the people, not to mention the beauty of the country itself. Even then, during wartime, the food was terrific, too. It still is, as I discovered earlier this year when I returned to Vietnam. The people are open, friendly and confident, just as they were before. But now, not only is the war over, Vietnam is the second-fastest-growing economy in the world. (China is first.) The standard of living of millions of people is improving at a rapid pace. (more...)

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