How China is eating the world

[katty]

more: http://news.independent.co.uk/business/analysis_and_features/article3143288.ece

How China is eating the world

China's remarkable economic growth is powering the global economy, but can the world afford to keep on supplying its ever-growing demands for food and raw materials?
By Sean O'Grady

Published: 09 November 2007

Economists are notorious for being unable to reach an easy consensus on many issues, but talk to any of them about the outlook for the global economy and before long the word "China" always starts to dominate the conversation. And it is true that the robustness of Chinese economic growth – around 10 per cent forecast for 2008, barely changed on recent trends – is picking up the pace being lost by faltering Western economies. Trouble is, they're also eating the world – literally, in the case of food supplies.

According to the IMF, about half of the world's economic growth this year will be accounted for by Brazil, Russia, India and China – the BRICs. India, staggeringly, is contributing more growth to the world economy than the United States, but China is by far the most powerful engine of growth – more so than the US, the eurozone and Japan combined. So, "China saves the world" – or at least helps to maintain global economic growth around the 5 per cent mark. Were it not for China and these other emerging economies, the world might well be staring a recession in the face.

Yet this phenomenon is not an unalloyed economic good. As yesterday's news about Rio Tinto and BHP demonstrates, the commodities price boom has led to huge valuations for companies in this field; great for their shareholders, but another signal that the insatiable Chinese demand for oil, copper, zinc, nickel and all the other raw materials of industrialisation is pushing the prices of those commodities to ever-higher peaks.

[izquierdista]

1. It's not the food, but the energy

If they intend to have the same energy footprint as the average American, civilization will go out in one big extravagant splat.

The most hideous energy wasting activity I can think of is importing ceramic floor tile from China to the US. It's just wrong on so many levels, from manufacture to shipping to distribution, that one has to marvel at how economic sense can be made of it. Yet from my personal survey, MOST of the ceramic tile sold at the major home improvement chains is from China.

I suppose though, they feel it is their right and their due, as the emerging economic power, to ignore anything that would have them trim their sails.

[katty]

2. yeah, to U.S.,UK,others: You've had your turn-now it's ours