Grasping the World’s Biggest Economic Boom

Just read a nicely-written article with interesting statistics about China at The Independent (via Dan over at China Law Blog).

Though China’s market reforms and subsequent economic growth started 30 years ago, it has only been the recent decade where an appreciable amount of the masses are finally grasping just how profound it is. I say “grasping” because even so, the vast majority of them have yet to appreciate or truly understand just what China’s rise to global economic and political prominence will mean, burdened as they are–understandably–by their fears and ultimately their ignorance.

Here is a good excerpt (emphasis mine):

I am not sure we in the West fully grasp the magnitude of what is happening. Intellectually we can see it affecting us but emotionally it is hard to understand that we are moving towards a world where Western ideas, our ideas, will no longer hold sway. China has other ideas. Those will increasingly co-exist alongside ours in shaping global economic and political development….We will not find this comfortable. What we think will matter less and less. But we cannot do anything about it, and in any case, consider the alternative. Would we really want a China that was failing in economic terms, with all the misery that would cause? That would surely be far more dangerous and disruptive to the world than a continuation of China’s thrilling but terrifying success story.

The following is an excerpt of some of those interesting statistics, many of them with political undertones but at least one of them being just plain amusing:

30,000: The expected number of Chinese MBA graduates in 2008. The number in 1998: 0

500: The number of coal-fired power plants China plans to build in the next decade

10 million: The estimated number of Chinese people who have no electricity

180: The number of foreign press correspondents arrested or harassed in 2007

540 million: Number of mobile phone users in China, with an increase of 44 million in the past six months

180: The number of foreign press correspondents arrested or harassed in 2007

160: Cities in China with populations that exceed a million. In the USA there are nine; in the UK just two

22: The number of suicides per 100,000 people, about 50 per cent higher than the global average. Suicide is the fifth most common cause of death in China, and the first among people aged between 20 and 35

30: The number of different animal penises on the menu at Guolizhuang, Beijing’s ‘penis emporium’. A yak’s costs about £15, while a tiger’s (which must be pre-ordered) will set you back £3,000

Mmm…tiger penis.

From an business perspective, especially in light of Elliott’s recent post on the advice AAMA had to give for would-be Chinese returnees thinking of throwing up a startup in China, one key statistic about China is to remember that 400 million of its 1.3 billion population are part of its “middle class.” Sure, that still leaves 900 million of them in the type of poverty most Westerners can’t even comprehend but that’s still 100 million more people than the entire United States population.The markets (both consumer and labor) certainly exist in China, there’s no question about it. Success of execution is another matter entirely.

From a socio-political perspective, given the recent anti-China sentiment propagating around the world, there is a lot to understand about modern China. Indeed, much of it will require a substantial amount of tolerance, patience, even compassion as the “communist liberation” of the 1950s, in many ways, transformed the world’s oldest civilization is one of its most immature. Failure to resolve our collective mutual misunderstandings will only create additional problems and squandered opportunities, especially in business. That Chinese ideas will inevitably crowd Western ideas should highlight, not overshadow, the fact that there is much good that non-Chinese can share with the Chinese and vice versa. The ideal of a marketplace of ideas would not be an ideal otherwise.