New chinese MBT

[RecruitMonty]

Has anyone actually taken a look at the state of the Chinese economy in the last few months? Its been hit pretty hard by the recent economic turmoil. It's investors, most of whom are Westerners, are starting to tighten their belts with a vengeance.

lets just see where this economic crisis leads us before we start dreaming up fantastical notions of Chinese supremacy.

Their economic growth, though very rapid, is still nowhere near high enough for them to overtake the West. The standard of living in China is still proportionately much lower than it is in Europe and America (isn't likely to improve either as the low maintenance associated with that is one of the key things that made the country so damn attractive to foreign investors in the first place). Salaries are lower across the board and Hong Kong, precisely because it was run by the British, is an exception rather than a rule. China would need many more years of virtually unimpeded growth to even begin to be on a par with the West in any of these aspects. This of course is no longer possible thanks to our little friend financial crisis.

China is almost entirely dependent on exports to other countries (mainly developed ones). As we are not exactly talking about specialist products or even crucial ones it makes things that much more fragile for their economy if things go wrong elsewhere. Why? Simple. The stuff they make anyone can and, if worse does indeed come to worst even the most arrogant Europeans and Americans will be willing to go back to making shirts and electrical appliances if it means rebuilding their own economies and securing better futures for themselves down the line. The fortunes of x million Chinese workers will be the last thing on their minds.

We might even see the end of the so called Global Economy if it turns out that the inter-dependence is what caused the damage to spread so far so fast. After all there are always two sides to every coin. We saw the benefits and now we are going to see the rest.

Bottom line is that China, like any of the Asian economies (save possibly Japan, Singapore and a couple of others) can only prosper when its customers are prospering. Its own population is in no position to what the West does for it at the moment.

China and the rest of these countries came too late to the party.