"The snake has initiated its transformation", said Erik IZRAELEWIZC playing this animal metaphor to evoke China, stripped of its skin spotted with communism and protectionism, which finally awakened. Modern cities developed there, and have tripled in volume in recent years. Cities like Shanghai, Shenzhen and Beijing, are present now, massive human migrations are occurring continuously, transforming the villages into megacities, and the settlements are grow like mushrooms in huge camps which have been established for 25 years, with bridges, ports, airports, towers and dams, all connected by more than 1.3 million miles of paved roads.
The mutation that has occurred is of surprising dimensions. China represents a land of disproportion. Its GDP is growing annually by around 9%, and the country is now ranked sixth in the world behind France and ahead of Italy! More than two centuries after the pioneer country, Britain, China began its industrial revolution. The wealth that the revolution brought, also translated into urbanization, industrialization and the emergence of a middle class, heralding the beginning of mass consumption. As elsewhere, the brutality of transformations generated very deep imbalances, and social unrest.
Banks were choked by bad debts, "casinos" were created in the euphoria of the 90s (Shanghai and Shenzhen), and the financial bubble exploded, causing speculation, and building tensions within the Chinese Communist Party, which is considered as the creator of the worst future for the country. Like the U.S. in the early nineteenth century, the turmoil may dampen the movement at a later day, but today nothing seems to be able to stop in the rise of China.
However, the mutation of the country is frightening and worrying many people around the world. The reasons for this fear are the same as those that make the rise of China an exceptional event. These reasons include the excessive size of the country (20% of world population), the originality of its development choices (the "hyper capitalism"), and the ease of communication, travel, and trade that the country affords. To these reasons, we can add a lack of accuracy and honesty in the Chinese Bureau of Statistics.
Tags: Communism, protectionism, Chinese Bureau of Statistics, Chinese Communist Party, urbanization, industrialization, revolution.
[...] Now incapable of self-sufficiency, China turned to the outside, playing a kind of "freeloading" function on the world market, by buying almost a quarter of world production. The arrival of China on the world market for raw materials has upset the "old western economies" which are obsessed by new technology, recalling the importance of commodities, and resources forgotten and abandoned in favor of the intangible. Thus, world order is in the process of being amended. Exporters of raw materials will become richer while the buyers are likely to suffer greatly. [...]
[...] However, with the rise of China an incalculable shift has begun. To describe the enormity of China, Izraelewicz speaks of a "giant goose" that is poised to take flight after the "small" ones such as Japan and Singapore. As we have seen earlier, the emergence of China took place at a time when globalization was in full swing, which was not the case with its predecessors. In fact, China could well "change the world" and abruptly and permanently disrupt the global balance. [...]
[...] Personal opinion China is waking up, and with it, the world is gradually changing its face. We are now witnessing a true "Collision of Worlds" as stated by Erik Izraelewicz. The certainties of yesterday are being questioned. With the huge strength of 1.3 billion people (one fifth of humanity), the dragon is spitting flames from its economic development on the western world, but I fear they are not generating and substantial change into any of our habits. What we eat, and how we live, will (Industry and Chinese carbon dioxide emissions contribute greatly to accelerating the greenhouse effect) are all likely to be affected. [...]
[...] the rise of China an exceptional event. These reasons include the excessive size of the country of world population), the originality of its development choices (the "hyper capitalism"), and the ease of communication, travel, and trade that the country affords. To these reasons, we can add a lack of accuracy and honesty in the Chinese Bureau of Statistics. A flight of wild geese Many Asian countries emerged from their underdevelopment by successive takeoffs during the last fifty years by combining liberalization and openness to the world. [...]
[...] The Americans accuse China for all their problems. Indeed, it is causing a series of imbalances in their economies by flooding the market with cheap products, thus giving the advantage to consumers by boosting the purchasing power of households. Moreover, China is known to be unscrupulous with respect to intellectual property, manufacturing the same products as the U.S. with indisputable productive advantages. The admirable advantages of China are attracting U.S. investors, and thus the country is the recipient of goods and foreign capital. [...]
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