Friday, September 14, 2012

Are you betting on the end of the China's growth miracle?

Are you betting on the end of the China's growth miracle? If you are, then an article in Business Week advises you against it. And it offers the age old argument to support its case. The productive capacity of a nation does not lie within its natural resources. Nor does it depend on the nation's location on the map. At its core, it is a function of nothing else but the skills and size of the workforce and also the country's accumulated intellectual and physical capital. 

And Business Week takes the support of these very arguments to present its case. It opines that the shift of Chinese labour from agriculture and into manufacturing and services could alone account for 30% of the country's continued growth. And then there are the considerable opportunities to increase labour productivity through education. Thus, by 2025, the dragon nation will have to reach levels of university enrolment similar to those of Western European nations. And this might alone add more than 6% to growth rates. 

Well, there's no arguing that the route suggested by the business magazine is certainly the right one. But theChina of today appears ill equipped to go down this path we believe. Its growth up to this point has come about mainly due to infrastructure spending and thrust on exports. But to move into a still higher orbit, it may have to completely overhaul its present way of functioning. And how the dragon nation solves this problem will ultimately decide its fate over the next few decades. 

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