China's economic growth is a much debated issue and is said to change the face of the world and presently world economic patterns are being reshaped. A couple of figures can easily help to understand how deep these changes are. Over the past 10 years, the Chinese economy grew by 10% a year on average, making it the world's fastest growing economy. Given the size of the country, its population, its ambition and the forecasts, there is no doubt that China is to become the US's most serious competitor. Already, China's growth has had a tremendous impact on the price of many raw materials. As the Economist states, "China accounted for half of the world's consumption of cement, 30% of its coal, and 36% of its steel (of which imports jumped by 50%), according to China's National Bureau for Statistics. Copper imports rose by 15%, and nickel imports more than doubled. This helped to lift The Economist metals-price index by around half from a year ago, and by 75% from its low after September 11th 2001." .
[...] However, they often face rejection due to their high economic situation Chinese migrants assimilated with variable success in the countries where they arrived but overall they found themselves rather rejected and looked down on. This is in most cases due to their economic success which makes them easy targets for locals who feel undermined. The World Bank estimated that in 1991 the Chinese diaspora as a whole possessed a capital of about $400 billion and $600 billion in 1996. This is more than half of the GDP of countries such as France or Italy, which shows how economically powerful the overseas Chinese are. [...]
[...] In all of these countries, they make up at least 10% of the economy and sometimes much more whereas they are only the 10 largest. This is an accurate indicator of the tremendous power of the Chinese community all over Southeast Asia. The presence of these huge companies is only part of the economic influence of the Chinese community. Often times, local shops are also run by members of the diaspora and this is not shown by these statistics thus making them even more striking as they already show an obvious Chinese domination over the economy. [...]
[...] the recipient countries The Chinese diaspora as it is nowadays results from centuries of waves of migration The Chinese emigration goes back to very early ages. The Ming dynasty had a considerable tradition of trade and therefore thousands of Chinese sailors and traders used to settle in numerous places. The South China Sea and the Indian Ocean were particularly targeted by the Chinese trade and therefore lots of settlers migrated to these areas. These Chinese are nowadays well assimilated in the places where they live and although most of them still claim to belong to the Chinese culture a lot of inter-cultural exchanges and intermarriages took place, weakening their links with China. [...]
[...] II) The impact of the diaspora on the Chinese economy and its geographical implications The Chinese diaspora is one of the main support for the Chinese growth China is nowadays the first recipient for Foreign Direct Investment, which is one of the major vectors of the Chinese growth. These FDI obviously come from more developed countries such as the United States or European countries, but also from Southeast Asia and other places. This geography of the FDI is due to the important role played by the overseas Chinese. [...]
[...] The overseas Chinese impact the world geography in many ways As a last part of this paper, a map of the global Chinese diapora's economic influence has been drawn, taking into consideration both the role played by the diaspora in their host countries and in China and the way it changes the world and impact globalization. The map also takes into account the importance of fluxes, assessing precisely how big they are in order to increase the global accuracy of the map. [...]
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