CAIRO: “China Shakes the World by James Kynge became an immediate bestseller ever since it was published. Its success is well deserved, this well researched book is a must read for anyone willing to understand how China is affecting almost everything around us: unemployment, national economies, the environment and of course the things we buy.
The author James Kynge knows China well; he first went to China as a student, speaks fluent Mandarin and has traveled all over the country. His journalistic career started in 1985 in Beijing. He has spent over a decade reporting from China, latterly as China Bureau Chief for the Financial Times from 1998 to 2005. He is still living in Beijing with his wife and three children.
Kynge s thorough knowledge of his subject shines throughout the book. He admits that for many years, he was mainly focusing on how the world was affecting China with constant inflows of foreign capital then, suddenly the interest reversed and China became the central attraction.
It is difficult to pinpoint when, exactly, that transition took place; perhaps it was late in 2003, or it was early the next year, explains the writer who describes how from his office looking onto Beijing s main avenue, he could literally observe the economic changes: People were buying cars at such a rate that, week by week, the traffic on the avenue became noticeably more clogged. The buildings on the far side of the road that were Soviet-era apartment blocks when I started my assignment had become high-rise towers with marble foyers and glass and chrome exteriors by the that I finished it. Bicycles, once ubiquitous, were disappearing . The changes that I could see from my window were multiplied a million times across the country.
Kynge dispels the familiar notion that China s economic reforms were planned. Deng Xiaoping s free-market reforms were in fact the outcome of disobedience of government officials, farmers and entrepreneurs towards central government policies. China should surpass the United States as the world s biggest economy in about three decades. It is reshaping itself in the image of its American mentor on a larger scale and much faster. Anyone visiting China is always mesmerized by the myriads of people seen everywhere. The population is estimated now at about 1.300 billion. Its labor force is one of its strongest economic tools: more than 700 million people are willing to work on less than $2 a day driven by material privations due to China s past policies.
As a result, products in China are sold for up to one-tenth or even less of the lowest price available in the cheapest discount stores of Europe and the US. What will happen to manufacturers in the rest of the world when Chinese cheaper goods flood the global markets? In certain parts of Europe, century old textile industries are threatened and many have already closed. In the United States the successful Wal-Mart supermarkets offer an ever increasing number of Chinese goods. The author rightly points out that if today s businessmen dream of a billion-person market, in the past it was not so much a matter of multiplication but of division and the often traumatic sharing of scarce resources among so many people.
China is also climbing up fast the technology ladder. It would be unwise to think it cannot take the lead in any area it wishes to. Its successful space program provides ample proof.
In China Shakes the World the author also attempts to explain “why linear predictions of a manifest Chinese destiny may be flawed. China is trying to regain the technological lead it lost in the early nineteenth century, but by doing so it is causing human suffering, alienation and severe environmental problems.
Furthermore, its gigantic population is a both a source of strength and weakness: Even if the country s gross domestic product one day becomes as large as that of the US, simple mathematics ordains that its people at that time will on average be only one-sixth as wealthy as Americans . But at that time too, the children of Mao s population explosion in the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s will be into their retirement years. In fact, by 2040 around one-third of the then population- or some 400 million people- will be over the age of sixty. It may be that China grows old before it is rich.
Most Chinese dream of living like middle-class families in the West but the truth says the author is that the world does not have the resources to cater for 1.3 billion Chinese behaving like Americans. China s natural resources are clearly insufficient in regards to its mega population but it has also wasted and mismanaged them especially during the Communist era. Already huge chunks of the Amazonian forest are turned into soybeans field and the country s stellar economic growthis sustained by an insatiable demand for iron, wood, gas and petrol.
However, one of China s gravest ills is a crisis of trust. The manufacturing of counterfeit products and the violation of intellectual property rights are thriving. A false identity can be obtained for less than $100. Moreover, the stock market and the banking sector are rocked by continuous scandals due to a blatant lack of regulatory independence because the Chinese Communist Party recognizes no authority greater than its own.
The main problem with China s political system is that it does not permit the checks and balances necessary to supervise and regulate a capitalist economy in an efficient manner, says Kynge.
In the last page of this fascinating study on China s mega growth and it s impact on the rest of the world, James Kynge concludes that China is probably too much imbedded in the world s treaties and organizations and too dependant on others to bite the hands that feed it.
