No Moss

6 Themes Affecting the Global Economy

Er, make that a consumer market of $1 trillion. Sorry about that.

6 Themes Affecting the Global Economy

Iwishing, I'm an American who lives in China, and you cannot be serious about air quality! The filthy air of any Chinese city, including Shenzhen, where I live, cannot be compared to any US city outside of Los Angeles, and Los Angeles would be a clean air city in China. The air in Beijing and 10 huge cities I could name is filthy. FILTHY!! There is nothing to compare with them in the developed West.

The internal market you speak of is an infrastructure buildout, not a consumer market, since the consumer market is about $1 billion, or perhaps 15% of the US consumer market.

Product safety is an issue in China, and so is product quality. It's an issue within China as much as it is outside of China. Food products, toys, baby forumla, toothpaste, medicines, pet food, pretty much every consumer product category that could pose a hazard has been been implicated at one point or another. The former head of the Chinese equivalent of the FDA was implicated recently for taking massive bribes. I believe he was executed.

Despite government efforts (and Beijing is trying, although the realities of government of such a large country require that they frequently wink at the activities of the local communist party), corruption, shortcuts, and indifference to product safety and efficacy are endemic.

You are right, though, when you say that China is exporting inflation. Besides the strong RMB, China has high inflation. Food, especially pork and chicken, which are staples in the Chinese diet; ; rents; imported goods because of their high tariffs and price gouging at the retail level; coal, oil, natural gas, iron ore, metals and minerals in general, coking coal; and even rice and other grains are up substantially. This represents a real problem for a country where 2/3 of the population are truly poor and susceptible to even small price rises in basic goods. The government has acted to increase incomes, and more of this is on the way.

China is amoral in its approach to geopolitics, meaning that it looks after its own interests without considering the needs or suffering of others, and I don't see that they're too much worse than others in that regard. It certainly has no basis for criticizing others, though, since it will deal with the devil to advance its own interests.