When a car full of boy-racers overtakes an older, sputtering jalopy, onlookers give the slower vehicle barely a glance, though the racers themselves “might offer a finger-related gesture”, writes Bill Emmott, former editor of The Economist and long-time Japan pundit, in The Times on Monday.
Given that today’s boy-racers happen to be China, and that their super-charged economy has defied the global recession and is about to surpass Japan as the world’s second-biggest, the focus on the overtakers may be understandable, notes Emmott.
But, he adds, in a distinctly mournful tone for a country that gave rise to his earlier books such as “Japanophobia: The Myth of the Invincible Japanese”, it is regrettable. “Japan merits more than a glance, and certainly not a rude gesture.”
Indeed, Emmott is the first to admit that some of his regret may derive from personal sentiment. He reminisces:
I was a correspondent (for The Economist) in Tokyo during part of the 1980s, a time when it was Japan, not China, that caused shock and awe around the world.
And how times change. As the FT noted on Friday, China comfortably beat its target of 8 per cent economic growth last year and came close to overtaking a stagnant Japan as the world’s second-biggest economy, even as signs emerge of growing inflationary pressures.
China’s economy accelerated in the fourth quarter to expand by 10.7 per cent, and grew by 8.7 per cent in 2009 in spite of the biggest global economic crisis in generations.
China’s GDP reached $4,900bn, just short of the $5,100bn Japan is expected to register after last year’s contraction, according to Goldman Sachs.
But, advises Emmott, it’s time to look at Japan with fresh eyes, and focus on four main things, as follows (our emphasis):
That the moment when China’s economy does overtake Japan’s will beutterly meaningless to anyone except statisticians; that China’s economic development is nevertheless good for Japan; that an obsession with manufacturing and the ignoring of services is a main cause of Japan’s weakness; and that, slow and sputtering though it seems, Japan has just begun a political revolution that has the potential to bring economic strength back too.
From our vantage point sitting in Shanghai this week, we can definitely say that Emmott is wrong on his first point. Given the general talk among punters and just about anybody in China who is interested in stock markets and economic developments, the moment that China overtakes Japan as the world’s second biggest economy will mean a vast amount to a large number of Chinese people.
On the rest, however, Emmott could well be right. After all, the man who rode the crest of “Japanophobia” with a string of books and essays in the late 1980s and early 1990s seems to have again chosen the right theme for the times, with his recent book, “Rivals: How the Power Struggle Between China, India and Japan Will Shape Our Next Decade”.
But on China’s Japan-like rush to bubbledom, Peter Tasker, a long-time Japan observer, occasional FT commentator and Emmott’s one-time co-author of a book of essays, had this to say in a recent FT comment:
If China continues to follow the Japanese template, the end of the dollar peg will be the trigger event, setting off a Godzilla-sized credit binge. Why would China’s rulers embark on a such a disastrous course? Because the alternative – unleashing deflationary forces stored up over years of mercantilist policies – would be too painful to contemplate. That was the choice made by Japanese policymakers, who had 100 years’ experience of managing a quasi-capitalist economy.
This time the denouement would be one of the biggest bubbles in history, probably in scale and certainly in number of people involved. Could China weather the subsequent financial turmoil as stoically as Japan? It seems unlikely; at the least its ascent to global hegemony would suffer an interruption.
Žiadne komentáre:
Zverejnenie komentára