Okay, so I must admit that I had to go look up "bullish" in the dictionary. It still doesn't make intuitive sense to me, but from the context of Dickovick's own post, I take it to mean something like "optimistic" about China's future.
Well, perhaps I am bullish then. Certainly, held up against many others who study China - and especially against most Americans and to some lesser extent Europeans - I must seem like an optimist. There are both moral and pragmatic aspects at play here, though, which is where it gets complicated. Suffice to say that I am as pessimistic about some of the moral implications of Communist Party rule in China as most others - think human rights and so on.
On the other hand, Dickovick gets at some very pragmatic issues which are cause for concern, but this is where I am much more optimistic. After all, China handled the past economic crisis much, much better than the US, Europe or Japan. Brazil's and India's respective success as well serve to suggest that China's success was because of its "BRIC" status - large and fairly capital independent economies - but a close look at China's success shows the magnificent efficiency of the Chinese government in regulating the markets, avoiding the same economic blow that struck the west. Can it go wrong in the future? Of course it can... but as opposed to the projections of many, it is not inevitable that China's model will fail in the near future.
My own area of study is Dickovick's point number six: whether the Communist Party can hold on to power as the Chinese middle class grows and consolidates. It can, but it is unlikely that it will in the foreseeable future. It is a point in the Beijing Consensus that I will return to in my next post - I will briefly focus on a few others here.
Demography and aging: it is often mentioned in context of China, but it is a problem faced by many, many countries who experienced the baby boom of the 60s and 70s. There will be fewer people to do the work, and more people to support. And for whatever interval the average retiree lives, that will continue to be true, holding all else constant. One interesting aspect to consider is how China will/can deal with this challenge compared to the mostly very developed countries who are not starting to experience the problem. How do the different stages of the economy affect the outcome? Remember that skewed demographics in China are partly articificial - government created by the One Child Policy - whereas the same issues arose, most seem to think, from population dynamics. The wealthier you are, for example, the fewer children you'll have, on average.
The alternative, as I see it, is the Indian model. Don't restrict population growth, and as is rightly noted, there will be no demographic aging issue. The outcome, though, is a population that approaches 2 billion within a few decades (if the population does not "regulate itself"). Considering how split India already is, should we not expect an even larger population to be a source of conflict? Is India not simply postponing the inevitable? I don't know. I'd enjoy the "India take" on this issue. Kane maybe?
Consider also the implication if we look at income per capita rather than GDP. Although growth of the latter slows down, growth in the first need not if the population experiences less population growth (note that population growth doesn't need to be negative for this to be true). The overall size of the economy will grow less quickly, but its people may be more content with the development.
Regulating the economy: Last, and quite honestly least, concerns about the banking system. Most of the concerns with the banking system is tied to recent reforms which were instituted with the stimulus in 2008. The housing market is bubbling as a consequence, and consumer based spending has decreased as a function of bank reforms as well. But, China showed in the years leading up to the crisis that it was aware of and willing to mitigate some of these problems - they were reversed partly because the type of stimulus pushed (which was fairly successful), making it an interesting point to follow in the future. As the crisis wears off completely, will China return to its policy which effectively handled these issues before the crisis?
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