Xinhua: British economist: China has promising growth prospects

June-2-2010

China has promising growth prospects and should not be blamed for world imbalances, says Danny Quah, a renowned British economist.

"Emergency financing that was placed in the Chinese economy to counter the downturn from the 2008 global financial crisis was the right thing...The imbalances is a global problem, not a China problem," said Quah, a professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

China did the right thing in infusing its economy with fiscal stimulus, Quah said in a recent interview with Xinhua.

He also declined to describe the ballooning real estate prices as a bubble, pointing out "the strong fundamentals" of China's economy.

He said the expansion of China's housing construction will be proved useful eventually, given the fact that "China is still engaging in the task of moving hundreds of millions of people from rural areas to urban China to continue to power its manufacturing and industrial progress."

"So I would not describe it as a collapse of real estate bubble, we can look forward to a rationalization of housing and real estate prices," Quah said. "The improvement and expansion of housing stock will play an important role in continuing to move the Chinese economy forward."

"I think Chinese fundamentals will continue to be strong. And a little bit of high inflation, as long as it doesn't break out into some kind of runaway high inflation, is probably no bad thing," he said. "We will get it under control again as the Chinese government did previously."

On allegations that China deliberately keeps its currency RMB weak to obtain unfair advantages in trade with countries like the United States, Quah said people who draw such a false conclusion are misguided.

"The United States is running a trade deficit not just against China. It is running a trade deficit against almost 100 other countries," he said. "China is not unique in how it is exporting more to the United States than it's importing."

The U.S. government was beginning to run a large trade deficit long before China's trade surpluses started grow, he added.

"If you take the ratio of China's bilateral trade surplus against the U.S. as a fraction of the U.S.' overall bilateral trade deficit against all of the countries, it has remained constant over the last 15, 20 years," Quah said.

He said these facts clearly show that the appreciation of RMB will not end the U.S. trade deficit, instead it may produce unexpected repercussions upon the U.S. economy and the rest of the world.

Quah said RMB appreciation would also force American consumers to purchase goods from other nations at higher expenses.

"Revaluation proponents should be reminded that manufacturers of the U.S. rely on the inputs from China," he said. "If China's commodities get more expensive, it would hurt the U.S. industry, and hundreds of thousands of jobs will be destroyed."

When asked what is behind the world imbalances, Quah said: "The direction of the causality I think is much more compelling from the behavior of the U.S. economy to the rest of the world than it is from China to the U.S. economy."

"The inability of the dollar to adjust the world imbalance contributes much to the financial crisis," he said.

"If you believe this alternative of this pattern of causality, then how we fix the problem of trade deficit imbalances is to fix the U.S. economy," he added.

Quah said the U.S. role in the world economy is no longer as optimistic as it was. Other parts of the global economy are actually growing faster and already having a much bigger role in the global economy. American consumers have to be more careful with their borrowing behaviors, he said.

"When they do that, I would argue, a more rational attitude toward savings and consumption. That would restore the world pattern of global balances," he said. "We would need other things as well, but I think that is the single largest cause for global imbalances."

Quah said the "global economy's center of gravity," a quantified indicator showing the global distribution of economic activities, has been moving 2,000 km eastwards for the past three decades, indicating the increasing importance of the East in the world economy.

However, "it may take decades if not centuries to see a shift of leadership from the West to the East with the reconfiguration of political power and soft power paralleled with the economic power," he said.

ウクライナ 「オレンジ革命」の遺産を守れ（2月12日付・読売社説）

　脱ロシア、親欧米を目指した「オレンジ革命」後の歳月は、失われた５年となるのだろうか。

　ロシアと欧州連合（ＥＵ）に挟まれたウクライナで、親露派のヤヌコビッチ前首相が大統領に当選した。国民は５年前、一度は当選者とされた同氏の選挙不正を糾弾した。オレンジをシンボルカラーにしたデモや集会で再選挙を実現し、現ユシチェンコ政権を誕生させた。

　その街頭行動で退けた人物を、国民は５年後、大統領の座に就けたのである。

　「革命」の主役だったユシチェンコ氏は今回、第１回投票で退場し、革命時の盟友だったチモシェンコ首相は決選投票で敗れた。

　ユシチェンコ政権はロシアの影響下から逃れようと、北大西洋条約機構（ＮＡＴＯ）への加盟を急いだ。だが、ウクライナ経済の生命線を握るロシアの対抗措置に苦しめられた。天然ガスの供給停止や価格引き上げである。

　さらに、一昨年来の世界同時不況が追い打ちをかけた。欧米の金融機関が資金を一斉に引き揚げ、経済は破綻(はたん)寸前となった。革命の主役たちはこの間、政争に明け暮れ、有効策を打てなかった。

　国民はその未熟な政治に失望した。そして、ロシアを敵に回しては立ちゆかない国の現実を認めざるを得なかったのだろう。

　チモシェンコ首相は今回も、選挙に不正があったとして、選挙結果を認めない意向を示している。だが、国際監視団は適正な選挙とみており、支持者の間にも、５年前のような憤怒や熱気はない。

　ＥＵも選挙結果を「民主化の成果」と認める声明を出した。欧州諸国はエネルギー確保や安全保障の観点から、自らもロシアと良好な関係を築く必要がある。ウクライナの不安定化は望まない、とのメッセージだった。

　ヤヌコビッチ氏は、ＮＡＴＯ加盟申請の撤回、ロシア黒海艦隊の駐留期限延長、ロシア語の公用語化を進めると公言している。

　しかし、かつてハプスブルク帝国に属した西部を中心に、欧州への帰属を求める住民は多い。ロシア寄りへの急旋回は、国家分裂の危機を招きかねない。新大統領には均衡ある舵(かじ)取りを望みたい。

　旧ソ連や東欧の一部では、統制経済から市場経済への移行期に、国の富が一部の者に独占されるという歪(ゆが)みが生じた。ウクライナでも公平な富の分配は実現していないが、国民は「革命」で、言論の自由は獲得した。その遺産だけは守り抜いてほしい。

（2010年2月12日01時05分 読売新聞）