WILL THE FINANCIAL CRISIS BRING UPHEAVAL TO CHINA?
Simon Elegant / Beijing
Time, December 25, 2008
For a while, it seemed China night be different. Maybe the unique factors that have allowed its economy to grow at an unprecedented rate for nearly 30 years would keep it afloat when the rest of the world was succumbing to the impact of the growing global financial crisis. But that hope has now been crushed under an increasing tide of grimmer and grimmer statistics that seem to portray an economy in free fall. China will have its hard landing in 2009, and even the most optimistic economists now concede that GDP growth will be far below the 8% annual pace that Chinese economists and officials generally regard as the minimum necessary for the preservation of social order, possibly hitting 5% or under.
As the depth of the slowdown becomes clearer, voices from all quarters have warned of the dangers of unrest. In mid-November, President Hu Jintao said the crisis would be a grave test of the Communists Party's ability to rule China, a warning echoed by other lower ranking leaders. At a December speech, Premier Wen Jiabao confessed to being particularly worried about unemployed workers and university graduates. Even the head of the country's Supreme Court warned judges to take social stability into mind when passing rulings. Overseas, too, worry swelled about just how deeply China's fragile social compact might be shaken by the experience of economic hard times for the first time in 30 years. The Obama administration should have a contingency plan for "what we would do if there's a major collapse of the political order," Roderick McFarquar of Harvard, one of the world's most respected China scholars, recently told a reporter.
But though there are certainly both pessimists and optimists, a large number of China scholars and analysts seem to belong to what might be called the "China will muddle through" school. They believe that, although worst case scenarios such as rioting and protests in the streets like the 1989 Tiananmen protests are possible, circumstances this time are very different and make a messy but relatively stable transition to whatever the country's next stage of development may most likely be.
Simon Elegant / Beijing
Time, December 25, 2008
For a while, it seemed China night be different. Maybe the unique factors that have allowed its economy to grow at an unprecedented rate for nearly 30 years would keep it afloat when the rest of the world was succumbing to the impact of the growing global financial crisis. But that hope has now been crushed under an increasing tide of grimmer and grimmer statistics that seem to portray an economy in free fall. China will have its hard landing in 2009, and even the most optimistic economists now concede that GDP growth will be far below the 8% annual pace that Chinese economists and officials generally regard as the minimum necessary for the preservation of social order, possibly hitting 5% or under.
As the depth of the slowdown becomes clearer, voices from all quarters have warned of the dangers of unrest. In mid-November, President Hu Jintao said the crisis would be a grave test of the Communists Party's ability to rule China, a warning echoed by other lower ranking leaders. At a December speech, Premier Wen Jiabao confessed to being particularly worried about unemployed workers and university graduates. Even the head of the country's Supreme Court warned judges to take social stability into mind when passing rulings. Overseas, too, worry swelled about just how deeply China's fragile social compact might be shaken by the experience of economic hard times for the first time in 30 years. The Obama administration should have a contingency plan for "what we would do if there's a major collapse of the political order," Roderick McFarquar of Harvard, one of the world's most respected China scholars, recently told a reporter.
But though there are certainly both pessimists and optimists, a large number of China scholars and analysts seem to belong to what might be called the "China will muddle through" school. They believe that, although worst case scenarios such as rioting and protests in the streets like the 1989 Tiananmen protests are possible, circumstances this time are very different and make a messy but relatively stable transition to whatever the country's next stage of development may most likely be.
(...) [artículo aquí]
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