Talk:Economy of the People's Republic of China/Archive 2

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents 1 Article needs updating 2 Agriculture 3 Vandalism 4 Is there a Labor Shortage in China? 5 Land ownership 6 Proposed Link 7 GDP graph 8 Strategic pork reserve 9 Challenges 10 Chinese economy redirect 11 Now with 40% less GDP! 12 U.S. Expertise, Western economists? 13 PPP numbers

Article needs updating

I read a some random pieces from the article and under trade and services it says "Average tariff rates on key U.S. agricultural exports will drop from 31% to 14% in 2004 and on industrial products from 25% to 9% by 2005." Please revise the article and update facts if necessary for a more up to date article. thanks JJB 15:45, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

The amount of updating for this page need to be so massive it would be similar in scale to the growth rate of the Chinese ecnomy. Yongke 23:37, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Agriculture

There are 1 billion Chinese farmers <-- This is obviously untrue considering the total work force is 778 million, and less than 1/2 of the workforce works in agriculture. 75.22.81.171 09:46, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

I corrected the statement. Please add new talk topics at the bottom of the existing ones (see the talkheader). - Ryanjo 03:06, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

Why is there a duplication of the "labor shortage" bit in agriculture?

Vandalism

This page has received a large amount of vandalism in a small amount of time. Some errors are still on the page and need to be found. Shotmenot 14:16, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

Is there a Labor Shortage in China?

I don't think so. A report on March 2007 ^[1] cited the words from Tian Chengping, the Minister of Labor and Social Security who stated that "there would be 24 million new urban job-seekers on the market this year, but the government would only be able to find jobs for half of them." and "he admitted some sectors of the economy faced staff shortages". It seems to me that the so called labor shortage is only occuring in some sectors, or a regional phenomenon, e.g., in Guangdong province, where the salary level has not changed much since 15 years ago. There is no labor shortage on the country level. Sinolonghai 15:32, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

No, of course not, but local shortages may result in rising wages and improvement of working conditions in those areas. This is a broad worldwide movement as globalization (the flat world) results in pressures towards equality. In relationship to China's economy this phenomenon is significant as it both reduces the differential costs between Chinese manufacturing and the rest of the world and delivers a better life to Chinese workers. It also encourages broader development as manufacturers locate in areas where there is less of a shortage. This would seem to be a healthy development. Fred Bauder 17:27, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, of course yes. Labor shortage became a well known problem at 2003 in Guangdong, and quickly expanded to other provinces while at the same time getting worse very year in Guangdong. But you may already know that Chinese officers are used to deny problems because of political reason.

Unemployment and labor shortage exist at the same time in China, both issue are very serious. So yes or no may be too simple to answer the question.

Chinese high technical and service sectors are weak, so there are not enough jobs for young men who have finished high education. Because Chinese universities and colleges have much more students then before, it is very hard for a student to find a job. And some collapsed national owned companies cause many older workers to loose their jobs too. Finally, because of high market pressure, many family companies have been shut down ( reported by government reports), their employees has the same problem. The most extreme job shortage problem happens when government want to hire new employees, most time there are many people apply for one position, it is not rare to see one job with more then 3000 rivals( I am not joking).

On the other hand, Chinese booming manufacturing industry needs more and more cheap workers, but the number of young Chinese has reduced sharply because of the one-child policy, and many of them now go to university instead of starting work young. Since factories favor young, undereducated boys and girls, they face big labor shortage problem, especially in richer provinces like Guangdong, which haven't raise manufacturing workers' salary enough for almost 20 years. This is what the minister called "some sectors of the economy", but still he was not telling the whole story. While there are some remote places which still have many poor young men, many so called "over population" provinces have run out of cheap human resource. My home town is deep in center China, which exports human resource for decades. its economy just began to boom in recent year, this is partly caused by the labor shortage. But many factories can't find enough workers, in my uncle's factory, more then half of machines are idle, and I can see many new built big factories face bigger problem. Local TV station broadcast workers seeking AD all day, but since you can hardly find a young man in local rural area ( except Chinese new year), they now have to go to poorer regions to find workers. My hometown is not a rare case, some of my friends' hometown face this problem even earlier then us. Sorry may be this is not reliable way to get information, but Chinese medium offer little information about this, so you have to go around yourself to find what is happening.

You can see the minister insist there are 24 million new "urban job-seekers", but he didn't tell you this job-seekers are college students or young farmers from rural area. While college students( who are not willing or not suitable to work in a factory) can hardly find a decent job, factories can't find enough workers at the same time. This is (part of) the whole story. The officers always insisted China only lack "elite manufacturing workers", who are supposed to do physical work or operate machines better then normal workers, and blame Chinese colleges failed to educate this type of worker.

Indeed worker's salary are almost the same for 20 years in Guangdong, it just began to raise sharply in recent years, and new booming regions record even sharper raise. Many factories offer better work condition even if no one can force them to(because there isn't real labor union in China). If labor shortage is not a BIG problem, why they do this?

But at the same time, collage students get less salary then 5 years ago, because they can't find a job easily.

Summary: China lacks jobs for well educated, older workers. This problem may be resolved when China get stronger in high technique and service sectors. But Chinese manufacturing factories which depend on undereducated young workers face labor shortage, and this problem can be worse when young men getting fewer even quicker (thanks to the one-child policy), and the economy continues booming. Purpureleaf 12:05, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Land ownership

This blog entry remarks:

Consider that China essentially has no real estate market (the government owns all the land in China, and grants leases to home owners for up to 75 years).

If accurate, that would make the basis of an interesting section for this article. -- Beland 21:18, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, this also relates to the problem of uncompensated confiscation of farming land to build factories by local officials. Fred Bauder 17:29, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

No it is 70 years. Recently the government offer a "solution" : the home owner can buy the home again after 70 years, and his children can own the house for ever if they update their ownership every 70 years. But it is not clear how much the owner have to pay again. This is considered by someone a good step since some of them feared that the government will drive their sons out 70 years later.Purpureleaf 12:15, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Can we please not use blogs as a source of information? I don't have anything against them, but it's just not reputable enough for wikipedia. 129.173.136.98 15:17, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Proposed Link

Hi, I'm working with The Pulitzer Center, a non-profit journalism agency geared towards providing audience to underrepresented news stories. I'd like to link this page to a related articles on the Pulitzer site; http://www.pulitzercenter.org/showproject.cfm?id=12 concerning China’s economic influence throughout Asia. Please let me know if I can post this link. Many thanks in advance. Blendus 01:21, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

GDP graph

Could anyone get a logarithmic graph to replace http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Prc1952-2005gdp.gif, as I think that would show much better the relative growth of the country. Were it not for me having to assume good faith I would say that this graph is designed to overstate growth after the market reforms... --Tilmitt 15:40, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Strategic pork reserve

I did not make this up. There is such a thing and it would make an interesting article. Fred Bauder 13:01, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

In the good old US of A, there is also a strategic reserve of poop. I am not making this up either, I simply don't have any sorces. It would make an VERY interesting article indeed. 24.89.245.62 03:47, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Clever, but it's all about sources now. Fred Bauder 13:55, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Is there any more information anywhere else about it? If not then there can't be an article made about the "strategic pork reserve" 68.36.163.67 19:14, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

I think they would have to be Chinese. It is extremely unlikely anyone outside China would grok the idea. Fred Bauder (talk) 03:53, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Challenges

The section on labor shortages and the rising cost of imports is included as a challenge from the Chinese perspective, but is actually a very hopeful sign that Chinese incomes are rising and the Chinese people are starting to share in China's prosperity. It is also good for American workers as a tiny opportunity is being opened permitting increased cost for American products. Continued into the future this trend will lead to much higher incomes for Chinese workers and a much better standard of living and reduction of the flood of cheap Chinese imports into the United States, reducing the relentless pressure currently impacting American manufacturers and workers. Fred Bauder 13:55, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Chinese economy redirect

Please do not redirect Chinese economy to this page. Unless you can undoubtedly debate the Chinese triangle that are well adopted by economist. The PRC economy is not exactly THE Chinese economy. Benjwong 22:22, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Per WP:COMMON it is actually the correct thing to do. Place disambiguation links at the top. --Kim D. Petersen 22:28, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

Now with 40% less GDP!

[2] In a little-noticed mid-summer announcement, the Asian Development Bank presented official survey results indicating China’s economy is smaller and poorer than established estimates say. The announcement cited the first authoritative measure of China’s size using purchasing power parity methods. The results tell us that when the World Bank announces its expected PPP data revisions later this year, China’s economy will turn out to be 40 per cent smaller than previously stated.

This more accurate picture of China clarifies why Beijing concentrates so heavily on domestic priorities such as growth, public investment, pollution control and poverty reduction. The number of people in China living below the World Bank’s dollar-a-day poverty line is 300m – three times larger than currently estimated.

Why such a large revision in the estimates of China’s economic condition? Until recently, China had never participated in the careful price surveys needed to convert accurately its gross domestic product into PPP dollars.

The World Bank’s estimates based on summary data from the late 1980s probably overstated China’s PPP gross domestic product even then. Up to now, the bank has revised its estimate very little. In the meantime, China has repeatedly raised the prices of food, housing, healthcare and a range of other non-traded goods and services. These reforms should have lowered the PPP adjustment, but the bank left it basically unchanged.

Last month, Robert Zoellick, World Bank president, argued that the bank should continue to lend to countries such as China, India and Brazil because they still had large shares of the world’s poor.

The new, more accurate statistics describing a smaller, poorer China strengthen this argument. The ADB’s announcement also indicates that the number of dollar-a-day poor in India is closer to 800m than the current estimate of 400m.

These PPP adjustments affect poverty measures because the World Bank’s dollar-a-day poverty line is a PPP dollar poverty line. Reducing PPP consumption estimates drops large numbers of additional households below the poverty line.

For China, the correction needs to be made back to the 1980s and 1990s, when instead of World Bank estimates of roughly 300m people below the dollar-a-day poverty line, the number was more likely more than 500m. China has made enormous strides in lifting its population out of poverty – but the task was perhaps more gargantuan than most people thought and progress has been overstated by bank estimates.

These calculations are not just esoteric academic tweaks. Based on the old estimates, the US Government Accountability Office reported this year that China’s economy in PPP terms would be larger than the US by as early as 2012. Such reports raise alarms in security circles about China’s ability to build a defence establishment to challenge America’s.

Well-informed analysts know that PPP calculations are a poor measure of a country’s potential military base, but with the corrected China PPP statistics, the whole question is moot. China is just not that big now and will not get that big any time soon.

Given uncertainties about China’s political and security evolution, this more moderate picture of China’s economic size is reassuring. It means that the US and other developed nations have more time to engage China and interact with its fledgling institutions. There might be no better place to start than with military-to-military relations.

The immediate international interest, however, is for China to succeed in its still daunting internal development challenges. Such opportunities might be manageable if engagement focused on a needy sub-region such as Sichuan Province, where the US has a flourishing Peace Corps programme. The goal is to promote economic development conducive to political moderation.

Close contact with China’s development process on the ground might also help us understand better the lessons China’s experience might have for so many poor countries where development is stalled.

Finally, both Congress and the Treasury department should recognise the limitations and opportunities revealed by these more accurate data. For example, risks to its impoverished rural hinterland from a sudden large revaluation of its currency loom larger in Beijing’s eyes than in Washington’s. Acknowledging this could smooth negotiations. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 218.110.182.92 (talk) 23:00, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

U.S. Expertise, Western economists?

In the 2000-present section, the idea that the price liberalization programs were "implemented by the western economists" needs serious supporting. The claim is especially unlike considering that China trusts its own economists better, has not looked favorably on western economic advice since their disasterous results in the Soviet Union, and the fact that China's own economists are simply better trained on Chinese economic issues. Certainly western economists are unlikely to be in any position to *implement* a Chinese program.

I will check back in a few weeks and remove this claim if no support is given. Goldenpanda (talk) 23:03, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Removed. It was written by User:Singapore-One on 25 October 2007. See history. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Zappa711 (talk • contribs)

PPP numbers

PPP GDP is not used in the business, financial and economic worlds. It is used just by the political world, and by organizations when they have a political agenda. In this case, the World Bank wants everyone to believe it is still relevant - hence it redefined the PPP criteria again. There is no standard way to measure it which is why it doesn't get used in the first place.

Their estimate of 800 million poor for India covers pretty much the whole population.

Ajoykt (talk) 00:33, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.