With world financial markets reeling, the US having just received a downgraded credit-rating in relation to long-term debt and anxiety around the globe about where we are all headed economically, an expert says that China is destined to remain steaming ahead at full speed.
"Ask the Nobel Prize-winning economist who has advised China on its latest five-year plan the question on every Australian economists' lips, and he does not flinch.
"How long have they got? How much longer can China's extraordinary explosion of economic growth continue," I ask Michael Spence down a phone line to Italy, where he lives six months of the year.
"I think the answer is something like two decades, in the later part of that they will start to slow down," he says ahead of his book tour of Australia to promote The Next Convergence - the Future of Economic Growth in a Multispeed World.
He is a good person to ask. As well as advising China on growth for the past four years, he has chaired the World Bank-sponsored Commission on Growth and Development, set up to distil all that is known about how to drive economic growth and cut poverty. His key insight about China is striking - that the sudden burst of growth that has revolutionised global economics and politics was the result of a conscious decision made by just a handful of people. Deng Xiaoping and a few comrades could have decided to throw the switch to growth later, perhaps even in 20 years; they could have decided to do it earlier, although not before Mao died and the Gang of Four were arrested in the late 1970s.
Deng and cronies decided first to allow the limited use of market prices for farmers selling production over and above what was required, saw the results were impressive, and then semi-secretly invited experts, including the then president of the World Bank, Robert McNamara, to give them advice on what to do next."
"Ask the Nobel Prize-winning economist who has advised China on its latest five-year plan the question on every Australian economists' lips, and he does not flinch.
"How long have they got? How much longer can China's extraordinary explosion of economic growth continue," I ask Michael Spence down a phone line to Italy, where he lives six months of the year.
"I think the answer is something like two decades, in the later part of that they will start to slow down," he says ahead of his book tour of Australia to promote The Next Convergence - the Future of Economic Growth in a Multispeed World.
He is a good person to ask. As well as advising China on growth for the past four years, he has chaired the World Bank-sponsored Commission on Growth and Development, set up to distil all that is known about how to drive economic growth and cut poverty. His key insight about China is striking - that the sudden burst of growth that has revolutionised global economics and politics was the result of a conscious decision made by just a handful of people. Deng Xiaoping and a few comrades could have decided to throw the switch to growth later, perhaps even in 20 years; they could have decided to do it earlier, although not before Mao died and the Gang of Four were arrested in the late 1970s.
Deng and cronies decided first to allow the limited use of market prices for farmers selling production over and above what was required, saw the results were impressive, and then semi-secretly invited experts, including the then president of the World Bank, Robert McNamara, to give them advice on what to do next."
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