With the world's largest population (1.3 billion) and an economy in Big Bang phase after a number of its centralized, state-controlled restrictions were removed or loosened, many predict China will be the dominant economic nation of the 21st century.
University of Chicago professors, Gary Becker (economics, Nobel Laureate) and Richard Posner (law), in their lively and erudite tandem blog, see a number of reasons — including similar past predictions for Germany, Soviet Union, and Japan that didn't pan out — why China may not rise to the level of economic hegemony many envision.
For me, the most potentially damning note is gender-based. Posner writes:
- With 116 recorded male births for every 100 female births, and an excess of 70 million males over females in the population as a whole, Chinese men will soon find themselves competing for an inadequate supply of women. The result is likely to be a steep decline in the age of first marriage for women (as in polygamoous societies), which may in turn reduce female participation in the workforce and with it economic output.
China, largely as a result of its "one child" policy, which has led many parents to make sure, one way or another, that that "one child" is a boy, may find its economy stymied by the same force that holds down the Islamic economies: lack of women in the workforce.
Article comments
1 - bhw
A Hunan hoo-hoo shortage, indeed.
2 - Bennett Dawson
Although sad for the Chinese, this may give the USA, and the rest of the world, a valuable opportunity to create industries that offset the low tech manufacturing that has found a long term home in the Chinese factories.
Will this lead to an increase in cultural diversity as China's bachelors decide that a cute Korean makes a good wife indeed?
3 - gonzo marx
a silly Postulate IMHO...many of China's "border kingdoms" have plenty of extra females...and even with the disparity...hell take ALL women out of the workforce...you still have what, the second largest single workforce on the planet, save India..and still possibly the largest?
we're talking more healthy male workers between 20-50 than every man, women, and child in the U.S....and i may be being conservative in the figures, difficult to be accurate when dealing with China and numbers
but even with much less, we do quirwe fine here in America when it comes to "economic hegemony"...and they don't have our regard for intellectual property, living wages and working conditions, child labor laws, ecological impact regulation and so on...
so i wouldn't count them out because they are temporarily short on women
western business has fallen into the habit of looking only at the bottom line for the next fiscal quarter..the ling view is one or two years out..
China thinks in terms of generations, their 100 year "investment" in the barren rock called Hong Kong worked out quite nicely, don't ya think?
Excelsior!
4 - Eric Olsen
the point isn't just bodies, it's the energy and creativity of a vital portion of the workforce aritificially removed, just like in the Islamic economies
And it isn't counting them out, it's saying that what appears inevitable may no be so
5 - Easymoney
There was some guy on Charlie Rose last night talking about a book called the world is flat. Sometimes I watch Charlie Rose to see the people try to figure out who they’re actually talking to â€" then Charlie springs his big surprise on them â€" they’re actually talking to Charlie Rose! His frequent guests must never watch the show â€" they’re surprised every time. I think Charlie must sleep in a little room in the back of the bloomberg studios and warm up spaghettios with a hot plate. Anyway, the guest who wrote the book about the world being flat wants President Bush to read his book. Dude! Like he reads books. So Charlie asks questions about this book for a whole hour, and this writer is tweaking, just stoked, talking about India and China being allowed to sell stuff to Walmart, and bid on every tedious shit-job in the world, and how wonderful it is that microsoft gets to cream off the smartest people in china and gag them with post-doc sheepskins. Meanwhile china’s thinking there just aren’t enough imperialists to sell off their smart people to. And Charlie and the writer, being elitists to the core, aren’t thinking about just how deep in shit the new workers are, except that its important that the United States never, ever let the new workers stop being â€" oh, you know the word â€" it means people who are despised for being oppressed. Which reminds me, it’s clear that in India, the untouchables are the ones burying toxic wastes in the middle of the night, but in China â€" who are the coal stokers? And is the meth any better in the Indian boom-towns? All those engineers â€" you think they make it any cleaner than our midwestern farm boys? No, seriously- there’s all kinds of shit in meth â€" it can’t be long term healthy. Heard about any good Valentine’s Day cults with suitably ethereal movie stars?
6 - Eric Olsen
Easymoney, I'd say the meth is causing some continuity issues
7 - Easymoney
actually, good sir, i was just ruminating on other reasons that china (and india) will probably not become the terror of the economic world. there are indeed side effects of a manufactoring base that neither country has dreamed of yet. serious meth use in the midwest might well be the fallout of the rust belt. both countries are new to a relatively moneyed working class. no women either? asking for trouble. nazi germany invented meth to... solve human reluctance - but there are some side effects like scabbin.
8 - Eric Olsen
thanks for your concurrence
9 - Z.Z. Bachman
Like all natural processes there will be reached an equilibrium assuming no major outside factors distrupt it's development. (World Politics)
Chindia -- as I like to refer to the region, will grow at the subtle expense of other nations labor markets until global economic homeostasis is reached... globalization may make some of this moot over time. Just make sure you diversify with some Chindia mutual funds in your stock porfolio and hold them for the long haul as a hedge. :)
Hmmm...
Zard
10 - Eric Olsen
I might have given the wrong impression here: I have no doubt at all that both China and India will grow robustly and continue to rise in world economic prominence, which is basically all to the good from the export market perspective, I just don't think they will attain a level of dominance, even taken together, that will constitute a "threat" or give them undue influence
11 - gonzo marx
Eric...
so you don't think 2 bilion plus will be overly influential over we here in the US with our mighty 300 million?
interesting..
due to what?..our huge manufacturig base?..mega lead in the IT industry?...call center monopoly?
we will see..
Excelsior
12 - Eric Olsen
both countries are at the phase where very high growth is realtively easy: we'll see how they are doing when their economies mature
13 - Tiresias
You do realize that for every female worker out of workforce there will be a male worker to replace her. The ratio changes, certainly, but the net amount of workers does not.
Unless, of course, there is some sort of mythic quality to the Female Worker that no lowly males can replace.
14 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Eric,
It was nice of a spammer to bring my attention to this article.
When the US was at its prime, lots of women were kept out of large parts of the job market. The only logical outcome of your article is that the Chinese may have to raise wages a bit. Women are a dime a dozen in southeast Asia.
15 - Dave Nalle
The Chinese economy will really get going when they realize that rather than killing female babies or selling their women into indentured servitude in sweatshops in Malaysia they could be selling them for a better price to be slaves in Saudi Arabia.
Dave
16 - Nancy
There have been articles in the WP and I believe in Time & Newsweek recently about the areas in China that are short of women - including interviews with the unmarried men & their families, such as they are. While the men might theoretically make a viable work force by themselves, it would appear the lack of women creates an untenable social situation for them that in turn creates unviable psychological settings leading to lassitude & decreased productivity, regardless. As one said, sure he can earn big bucks, but for what? He has no family, no kids to plan for, and therefore to all intents and purposes, no future, without a woman, a wife. Plus apparently life with only other men in the village/town is just plain dull.
17 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Nancy,
Stealing women is one of the oldest causes for invasions.
18 - Nancy
They don't have to steal them; they've already got guys who go around promising dim-witted young women big bucks for "waitressing" jobs, who of course then sell/ship them where they're wanted. You'd think any woman with half a brain cell would learn.
19 - Dave Nalle
Chinese culture discourages women from having any braincells at all.
Dave
20 - casdasd
"Chinese culture discourages women from having any braincells at all."
Dave
You're an idiot. Full stop.
See Dave a baseless allegation.
NOTE: I don't think Dave got the point.
Cheers,
A Braincell
21 - Don Mitchel
Our country is an experiment in cultural globalization that is not capable of providing jobs for its own people. The past 20 year period is not about some grand plan to pull the world up by the economic help of a global economy interacting for the common good. It is about looking the other way, on environmental destruction, compromising our core values to finance agendas, create personal prestige, and direction of revenue to political origins, all while portraying globalization as a noble vision for the common good. Economic globalization by a free market society that all people can benefit from can not be achieved by interlacing our countries economy with a communist country that controls the size of their middle class workers to benefit their currency valuation, while controlling the distribution of wealth to the privileged few. In other words they control the amount of have and have not's in their population. Our country has become so dependent now on imports for our largest employers, we can not act with legislation to keep our water and air clean from foreign ships bringing in foreign manufactured goods, all at the expense of American jobs . Ballast water laws affecting mostly foreign ships and the price of foreign manufactured goods would rise according to a 2009 report for congress,-- would hurt the plan for economic globalization which will carry our country on the coat tails of a communist country until the next global crisis. Nobel winners call for tariffs to help create jobs, report for congress says national ballast legislation to cause cost of imports to rise, and it just might have same effect as tariffs without a trade war, what dose this administration do??? since Senator Boxer killed ballast legislation? It offers incentives to foreign ships bringing foreign goods into our country, if they decide to volunteer to install technology to protect our water. Sadly the time has come for our country to face the piper, we need national ballast water legislation as one step to protecting our country from economic domination and environmental destruction by a country who dose not care about our core values.
22 - RESISTANCE IS FUTILE
China to be second richest by 2015
China is expected to overtake Japan as the second wealthiest country by 2015 on the back of rapid economic growth and strong domestic consumption, a report said Friday.
In its inaugural Global Wealth Report, Credit Suisse Research Institute predicts total wealth in China will more than double in five years, jumping 111 percent to 35 trillion US dollars.
"Ten years ago, China was the seventh largest country in global wealth. Since then, the country has accelerated past major European countries and is expected to overtake Japan in 2015," Giles Keating, Credit Suisse's head of research in private banking and asset management, told a news conference.
The United States currently has the largest share of wealth in the world, amounting to 27 percent of 195 trillion dollars. Japan comes in at second place with 11 percent and is trailed by China with eight percent, the report showed.
France, Italy, Germany and Britain come in at fourth place with six percent.
The report is based on data collected mid-2010 across more than 200 countries.
"The report confirms that Asia Pacific countries are driving the growth of the world's wealth.
Asia holds great potential for future growth," said Osama Abbasi, Credit Suisse's CEO Asia Pacific. China currently holds 16.5 trillion dollars, 35 percent more than France, the wealthiest European country, and almost five times that of India, according to the findings.
The report predicts consumption patterns in China will shift from necessities such as food and clothing to luxury items including recreation, education, health care and housing.
Wealth is also expected to surge in other emerging markets in the Asia Pacific region, especially India and Indonesia.
By 2015, India's wealth is expected to double to 6.4 trillion dollars while
Indonesia's will grow from 1.8 trillion dollars to more than 3.0 trillion dollars.
The report also found there are more billionaires in the Asia Pacific region than in Europe.
Of more than 1,000 billionaires globally, 500 are in North America, 245 in the Asia Pacific and 230 in Europe. AFP