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Η Κίνα στο Προσκήνιο

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Μετά τον Τέγκ Σιάο Πίνγκ η κατάσταση στη Κίνα έχει απομαοποιηθεί. Ο δογματισμός της συλλογικής ομοιομορφίας άρχισε να κλωνίζεται και στη θέση του προβάλλει η ποικιλομορφία των εκατό και πλέον εθνοτήτων που υπάρχουν στην αχανή αυτή χώρα.

Οι ρυθμοί ανάπτυξης είναι ραγδαίοι, κοντά στο 10% κατά έτος, τα συναλλαγματικά αποθέματα φθάνουν τα 3 τρις δολάρια, ο πληθωρισμός είναι σχετικά χαμηλός για τέτοιους φρενήρεις ρυθμούς, αλλά οι μεγάλες ανισότητες μεταξύ της ηπειρωτικής Κίνας και των παράκτιων περιοχών παραμένουν. Σε μεγάλο βαθμό η κινεζική ανάπτυξη στηρίζεται στις ξένες άμεσες επενδύσεις οι οποίες προσελκύονται από όλο τον αναπτυγμένο κόσμο αναζητώντας πολιτική σταθερότητα και χαμηλές αμοιβές εργασίας.

Παραθέτουμε κείμενο με την σύνθεση των ξένων άμεσων επενδύσεων και την παγκόσμια ανάκαμψη,  από κινεζικές πηγές.

 

With the financial crisis behind them, developing countries are now focusing on tackling specific challenges such as coping with inflationary pressure and dealing with high commodity prices. In contrast, prospects for high-income countries and many of Europe's developing countries remain clouded by crisis-related problems such as household and banking-sector budget consolidation and concerns over fiscal sustainability. Global Economic Prospects, the latest report of the World Bank, discussed these issues. Edited excerpts follow:

The global financial crisis is no longer the major force dictating the pace of economic activity in developing countries. The majority of developing countries have, or are close to having, regained full-capacity levels.

Macroeconomic policies in developing countries need to turn toward medium-term productivity enhancements, managing inflationary pressures and re-establishing the fiscal and monetary cushions that allowed most developing countries to make it through the crisis. In contrast, activities of high-income and some developing European countries continue to struggle with crisis-related problems, including banking-sector, fiscal and household restructuring.

Concerns about fiscal sustainability in high-income countries persist. High fiscal deficits and rising sovereign debt pose medium-term challenges to a wide-range of OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries. Although steps being taken by authorities to resolve short-term problems in the euro zone should prevent an acute crisis, a loss of confidence could have negative implications for developing countries.

Further financial stresses may emerge, as monetary policies in high-income countries are tightened. As short- and long-term interest rates and re-financing costs rise, both banks and firms may find their balance sheets coming under renewed pressure—requiring additional measures to address shortcomings.

Continued recovery

The global recovery has broadened to encompass more firms, more countries and more components of aggregate demand. Improving labor market conditions in high-income countries and strongly expanding domestic demand in developing countries augur well for a continued maturation of the recovery that is now almost two years old.

The recovery in the United States has gained strength over the past six months and shows signs of becoming more self-sustaining. Significant gains in levels of manufacturing and services activity and business investment have helped to improve conditions in the U.S. labor market. The unemployment rate dropped to 9.1 percent in May 2011. Following relatively weak weather-influenced first-quarter GDP results, and flagging in the pace of the recovery in the second quarter, GDP growth is expected to pick up in the second half of the year, with whole year gains of 2.6 percent in 2011 and 2.9 percent in 2012, and with growth easing to 2.7 percent by 2013.

The recovery in Europe continues to face substantial headwinds from uncertainty surrounding sovereign debt in several euro-zone members, and a wide-reaching but necessary process of fiscal consolidation. Nevertheless, economies of Germany and France have shown increasing strength, with unemployment in Germany now well below pre-crisis levels. But in many other countries, growth is becoming constrained by fairly austere fiscal consolidation programs, ongoing banking-sector restructuring and by a skepticism regarding the financial sector that is serving to raise borrowing costs. As monetary policy enters a renewed tightening phase, additional stresses in the financial sector may become more apparent, presenting further challenges for these economies. Overall, after expanding 1.7 percent in 2010, euro-zone GDP is expected to repeat that performance in 2011, strengthening to 1.8 percent in 2012 and 1.9 by 2013, as financial-sector headwinds to growth begin to fade.

The horrible natural disaster and ensuing nuclear challenge in Japan will shape economic and human developments in that country for years to come. Despite the very real human and wealth losses associated with the crisis, its impact on GDP growth is expected to be temporary. While second-quarter GDP could decline at a 3-percent annualized rate, the pace of activity is expected to pick up to a 3-percent or 4-percent annualized rate in the final two quarters of the year—bringing whole year growth to around 0.1 percent in 2011. GDP growth is likely to increase to 2.6 percent in 2012, before settling at 2 percent in 2013—broadly in line with the country's growth potential.

Overall, global growth is projected to ease from 3.8 percent in 2010 to 3.2 percent in 2011, before picking up to 3.6 percent in both 2012 and 2013. The slowdown for high-income countries mainly reflects weak growth in Japan due to the effects of the earthquake and tsunami. Growth in the remaining high-income countries is expected to remain broadly stable at around 2.5 percent through 2013, despite a gradual withdrawal of the substantial fiscal and monetary stimulus introduced following the financial crisis to prevent a more serious downturn.

The recovery is mostly complete in developing countries, with prospects in individual countries increasingly dependent on local conditions and medium-term productivity growth rather than the large, global-level forces that dominated economic activity during and immediately after the financial crisis.

There are several potential downside risks. A much more severe slowing of the global economy could come about if the political turmoil in the Middle East and north Africa were to result in a prolonged period of high oil prices—either through increased uncertainty, or an enduring disruption to global oil supply.

Conditions in global food markets represent a more focused risk for the poor in developing countries. Another year of poor harvests could mean prices rise still higher—especially if combined with higher oil prices—with potentially serious consequences for the poor.

The market nervousness over fiscal sustainability in high-income Europe, although less acute than in the past, still has the potential to disrupt growth in developing countries if it begins to weigh on confidence.

The rise in commodity prices, combined with strong capital inflows, has contributed to an acceleration of inflation throughout the developing world. Headline inflation in developing countries neared 7 percent year on year in April 2011, a 3-percentage-point increase since low points in July 2009, when concerns of deflation were paramount. Headline inflation in high-income countries has also picked up, reaching 2.8 percent in April 2011.

Responding to the rise in inflation, authorities in many developing countries have begun the process of adjusting macroeconomic policy, which had been loosened in the wake of the financial crisis, to a more neutral stance.

Efforts to tighten monetary policy and rein in credit growth were complicated in 2010 by strong capital inflows. Some of these flows (mainly short-term debt and equity flows) were perceived as having an important speculative and temporary component. As a result, many countries (notably several large middle-income countries with relatively deep capital markets) sought to resist the associated upward pressures on their currencies, putting into place a wide range of administrative and regulatory measures designed to reduce the attractiveness of short-term financial investments or reduce the extent of credit expansion associated with reserve accumulation.

Looking forward, policymakers in developing countries will need to make fuller use of all of the tools at their disposal to keep inflation under control. While the more unstable capital inflows that characterized the third quarter of 2010 have abated, many of the underlying conditions that attracted those flows remain in place, such as low short-term interest rates in high-income countries; stronger growth prospects in developing countries; strong commodity prices, and a long-run tendency for developing countries' currencies to appreciate. Moreover, countries are now confronted with additional pressures from growing capacity constraints and rising commodity prices.

A more assertive tightening of fiscal policies in developing countries would also allow a given level of macroeconomic tightening to be achieved at lower interest rates. Lower domestic interest rates would both reduce the financial incentive for potentially destabilizing short-term debt inflow, but might also increase investment rates and overall activity by lowering the cost of capital for local entrepreneurs.

Some countries should consider introducing more flexible exchange rate regimes. When countries face temporary or speculative pressures on their currencies, reserve accumulation and other strategies to resist unwarranted exchange rate appreciation, or depreciation, may well be warranted. But when those pressures are persistent and enduring, a policy that resists exchange rate adjustment may well be counter-productive.

Japanese investment in China is set to surge as it transfers manufacturing bases from areas damaged by the March earthquake and tsunami, boosting China's foreign direct investment (FDI), the Ministry of Commerce said on Wednesday.

To aid Japan's economic recovery, China plans to "send trade and investment delegations to the country in the coming months, and increase imports from Japan", Yao Jian, ministry spokesperson, said.

Yao was speaking at a monthly news conference during which the ministry announced China's FDI figures for the past five months.

FDI rose 13.43 percent year-on-year in May to $9.23 billion, the lowest increase this year, compared with 15.21 percent in April.

But it surged 23.4 percent, from January to May, to $48 billion, with 10,543 foreign entities setting up in China.

The country's non-financial outbound investment grew 42.3 percent year-on-year to $20.4 billion in the first five months.

"With China's investment environment improving, we expect the FDI will increase further this year," Yao said, while admitting that rising costs could hamper FDI growth.

Following the March earthquake many Japanese companies will move their manufacturing facilities to China, Yao said.

From January to March, Japanese companies invested $1.83 billion in China, making it the country's largest investor, from second largest after Singapore in 2010. The figures for April and May are not yet available.

Japan's largest supermarket chain operator, Aeon, plans to open at least 2,000 stores in China in the next 10 years, chief strategy officer Jerry Black said.

Japan is facing its worst crisis since World War II after the March 11 earthquake, ensuing tsunami and the radiation leak at Fukushima. Economists expect Japan's GDP will shrink for a third straight quarter in April-June before recovering in the second half of the year.

An aging population, declining consumption and pessimism among companies are adding to Japan's economic woes.

"It is highly possible that Japanese companies will move production lines to China," said Zhou Shijian, a senior trade expert at Tsinghua University.

In a recent exclusive interview with China Daily, Dai Hakozaki, deputy director of the Japan External Trade Organization Beijing, said China is likely to witness a new wave of Japanese companies transferring production lines. Regions hit by the quake and tsunami were major manufacturing areas and provided vital parts for the auto and electronics industry.

As a result, Japanese manufacturers in China have suffered due to the loss of these components.

China is the largest export destination for Japanese goods, but imports from Japan grew by only 4 percent in April and 7.7 percent in May because of the quake.

Japan's auto and mechanical equipment industries are the two main sectors that have invested in China, accounting for a combined 32 percent of Japan's investment in the country from January to September last year.

But some analysts voiced caution.

"We could see a transferring (of production lines from Japan), but it will not happen overnight," Wang Luo, an Asian studies specialist at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, said.

"In years to come, China could be the best spot in Asia for Japanese companies."

Investment opportunities in the country have attracted a large and growing number of international brands.

German chemical giant BASF announced plans on Wednesday to invest 40 million euros ($57 million) in its Shanghai production center to double production capacity.

Italian luxury company Prada plans to add 12 stores a year over the next three years to its existing 18 stores.

From January to May, foreign investment from 10 Asian nations and regions, including Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan, rose 29.28 percent to $41.24 billion. Investment from the European Union rose 9.02 percent to $2.93 billion.

But investment from the United States dropped 24.12 percent year-on-year to $1.29 billion.

"The slow and unstable economic recovery in the US led to the decrease," said Yao.

"We expect more US investment in China's service sector. But we need to study how to make it happen."

Hao Hongmei, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of International Trade and Economic Cooperation, said "there will not be big fluctuations in investment from the US and EU for the time being. But as China further opens its service market, FDI in the sector could see rapid growth."

From January to May, FDI in the service sector grew 27.68 percent, compared to 20.63 percent for the manufacturing sector.

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