“The nationwide survey, which will provide basic data for China’s Gini coefficient calculation, will cover about 140,000 urban and rural households, and the gathering and use of data will conform to international standards,” Xie Hongguang, deputy chief of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), said.

The integrated urban-rural income data is scheduled to be published in 2013 to pave the way for the publication of a national Gini coefficient that can measure income inequality, Xie said ….

Yi Xianrong, a researcher with the Institute of Finance and Banking under the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, suggested that the government introduce regulations to ensure the transparency of income information.

“The public have a right to know the Gini coefficient,” Yi said.

Last year’s NBS figures put China’s rural Gini coefficient at 0.39, just short of the 0.4 mark widely held to show potentially destabilising inequality. But the article also cites the World Bank’s 2009 estimate of 0.47 for the country as a whole. See explanations of the Gini coefficient from the World Bank and Wikipedia, and the latter’s global comparison, from Sweden and Norway in the 0.20s to Namibia at over 0.7.

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Post tags: economic inequality, income inequality, inequality, National Bureau of Statistics, urban rural divide, World Bank
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Estimates showed that China’s current relative status to the US was similar to Japan’s in 1951, and South Korea’s in 1977, who were in their high-speed development period, World Bank Chief Economist and Senior VP Justin Yifu Lin said.

“By the year of 2030, measured by purchasing power parity, China’s economic size may be twice as large as the US…and China’s per capita income would be half of that of the US by then,” Chinese state run Xinhua news agency quoted Lin as saying.

Lin did admit there were various  structural adjustments to be made  in the Chinese economy.

… China should consider ways to rebalance its economy towards domestic demand, given the inevitable slowdown in the exports and the need to reduce trade surplus.

China also needs to reduce its income disparities and rebalance short-term growth and long-term environmental sustainability, he said.

In other words, China’s economic potential is not inevitable. Various events could derail economic growth. From Bloomberg News:

Global risks include surging food, commodity and fuel prices that pose a threat to social stability, “as demonstrated by events that unfolded in Tunisia and Egypt,” Lin said.

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Post tags: economic growth, World Bank
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While US emissions fell substantially in 2009, to levels not seen since 1995-96, China surged ahead with an increase of more than 13% on the previous year – the equivalent of adding the yearly emissions of Germany, Greece and Peru combined ….

The map reveals how heavily future emissions trends depend on China, which overtook the US as the world’s biggest emitter in 2006-07. China’s emissions have so far risen just as fast as its runaway economic growth, but the government is hoping to “decouple” the two in the next decade, reducing the country’s emissions per unit of GDP by 40 to 45% by 2020, compared with 2005 levels. Doing so will be essential if global greenhouse gas emissions are to fall in line with scientific warnings.

But green campaigners want to stop western companies using the focus on China and their own falling output as an excuse for backpedalling on climate change. They have urged governments in developed countries to strengthen their emissions targets to prevent businesses from taking what would amount to an “emissions holiday”.

Meanwhile, the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs has published a new Air Quality Transparency Index together with the Renmin School of Law. Beijing-based doctoral student Angel Hsu writes:

Building off of similar indices aimed to gauge the availability and access of environmental information, such as the Pollution Information Transparency Index (PITI), the AQTI’s aim is to compare the transparency of air quality information in 20 Chinese cities and 10 international cities, mainly from North America and Europe.

The AQTI is significant start in providing greater and much needed context for air quality data in China, which have often been criticized for being confusing and misleading at times. Moreover, international agencies such as the World Bank has reported harrowing statistics suggesting China is home to some of the post polluted cities in the world. While reports like these do point to the serious environmental and health hazards caused by air pollution in many Chinese cities, it is important to note that international scrutiny of China’s air quality data would not even be possible of China didn’t make the data publicly accessible in the first place.

Of the Chinese cities included, only Beijing manages to scrape past New Delhi, ranked 10th and last among the international cities. Mexico City, in 9th place, lies some way ahead. Nevertheless, Beijing might take some comfort in a record streak of Blue Sky Days, surpassing even the two long periods in summer 2008 when authorities implemented exceptional anti-pollution measures to coincide with the Olympics.

© Samuel Wade for China Digital Times (CDT), 2011. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: air quality, Beijing, Beijing Olympics, blue sky, carbon emissions, environmental data, Germany, Greece, mexico, New Delhi, Peru, World Bank
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This is not an unambiguous story. This destruction is not being pursued out of wickedness: it is happening as a side-effect of a benevolent impulse. The Chinese people are determined to rise from poverty to prosperity. Forty years ago, China was starving. Today, it is in surplus. Some Chinese argue: if environmental damage is the price we pay for whiplash development, why not? You Europeans and Americans destroyed your environments, felled your forests, trashed your habitats all through your Industrial Revolution – and when you were rich enough, you cleaned it up. Yes there is a cost, but it is less than the cost of staying poor forever. How dare you lecture us, when most of our emissions are from factories you have outsourced to make goods and process waste for you, and when you refuse to even make tiny cuts in your emissions are home?

There’s some justice in these responses. Your contribution to global warming (and mine) vastly exceeds the average Chinese person’s. Every successful environmental treaty in history began with the biggest polluters cutting back first. Yet we are refusing to do it, and far from urging China to go green, our governments are doing the opposite. It wasn’t mentioned in the industrial quantities of journalistic hot air that accompanied Hu Jintao’s trip to Washington D.C., but the Obama administration is currently suing the Chinese government at the World Trade Organization to stop them from subsidizing wind farms, saying it represents ‘unfair competition.’ A seventy-a-day smoker riddled with lung cancer isn’t really in a position to lecture a younger man to stop smoking, especially if he’s trying to steal his nicotine patches.

But if this debate dissolves into a game of mutual finger-pointing – you’re the worst! No, you are! – then we will be trapped in a spiral of mutual environmental destruction. The argument that China will simply clean up the damage when they’re rich doesn’t work, alas, for two reasons. Firstly, 700,000 people are dying every year in China as a result of the extreme pollution, according to the World Bank. They can’t be compensated at some later date with a wind farm. Secondly, and even more crucially, the West “cleaned up” largely by exporting its pollution to poor countries like China. As Watts puts it: “This model relied on those at cleanup stage being able to sweep the accumulated dirt of development under a new and bigger rug. When this process reached China, it had already been expanding for two centuries. Now “the waste [is] getting too big and the rug too small.” Where is China going to export it to? For how long?

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Post tags: Barack Obama, global warming, Hu Jintao, industrial revolution, jonathan watts, thomas friedman, World Bank, world trade organization
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The bank raised its 2010 growth outlook from 9.5 percent to 10 percent and its growth outlook for next year from 8.5 percent to 8.7 percent. Growth eased in the third quarter to 9.6 percent from 10.3 percent the previous quarter as Beijing tried to steer it to a more manageable level.

“Growth is likely to moderate somewhat more in 2011 and the medium term to a still robust pace,” the bank said.

Despite a largely upbeat outlook, the bank said Beijing needs to do more to boost domestic demand and cut reliance on exports and investment. Communist leaders have announced that goal repeatedly but private sector analysts say they have done little to shift emphasis to consumer spending and service industries instead of manufacturing and construction.

“The need to rebalance to more domestic demand-led, service sector-oriented growth seems stronger now than five years ago, in part because the international environment is less favorable,” the bank said. “Rebalancing will not happen by itself – it will require significant policy adjustment.”

© Sophie Beach for China Digital Times (CDT), 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
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China has earned a new degree of recognition for its growing influence on the global economy, after members of the World Bank decided Sunday to increase Beijing’s voting power behind only the United States and Japan in the international lending body.

The boost underscored a broader decision at the bank’s meeting to raise the share of votes held by developing countries to just over 47 percent, as part of ongoing reforms to give poorer countries a greater say in setting World Bank lending policy.

“It will enhance the role that developing countries can play in World Bank affairs and also help the bank play a greater role in helping developing countries improve economic development and reduce poverty,” Chinese Finance Minister Xie Xuren said in a statement.

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It’s easy to forget that big international bodies like the IMF and the World Bank were created by just a few nations, led by the United States. These economic organizations have global reach, but that globe used to be dominated by the American superpower, and their policies were suffused with U.S. values. When Beijing was a small-stakes player its leaders didn’t always like the setup, but they lived with it, even facing down fierce grassroots opposition to join the World Trade Organization.

But now China has more worldwide clout, and public opinion at home has taken on a combative (and sometimes downright jingoistic) tone. So with one eye on China’s national interests and the other on domestic critics accusing the regime of “coddling” the West, Beijing has begun to push harder to reshape international systems to make them more China-friendly (and, in the process, to raise the regime’s chances of survival).

Ironically, U.S. officials often complain that Beijing isn’t more involved in running the world—declining to help security efforts in Afghanistan, for instance. But in most such cases, China is being asked to take part in a system it didn’t set up—one it views as inherently biased in favor of the West. The Chinese are far more eager to participate in groups they’ve had a hand in building, like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a sort of Central Asian NATO in which China (as might be guessed from the name) plays the leading role. While that alliance started out as something of a joke in 1996, it’s grown into a pillar of regional security.

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The World Bank raised its forecast for China’s 2009 economic growth to 7.2 percent in its China Quarterly Update published on June 18, up from a 6.5 percent forecast in March.

The Washington-based international financial institution based its revision on China’s record amount of loans and surging investment, which resulted from the massive 4 trillion yuan stimulus package announced last November.

China, the world’s fastest expanding economy and its third largest, has witnessed strong retail sales and a recovery in real estate and imports in the past quarter.

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The signs augur well for the global economy. China has been one of the world’s most voracious consumers of raw materials. While its aggressive spending plan reflects the power of its state-dominated economy, there are signs that its thrify consumers are starting to spend more.

Car sales hit a monthly record in March, according to figures issued Thursday, marking the third consecutive monthly rise. Housing sales in major cities have also picked up, with lower prices attracting buyers. The optimistic outlook has spread to businesses. The National Bureau of Statistics said this week that its survey of managers’ confidence rose in the first quarter after plunging in the final quarter of 2008.

Overall, it appears that the state’s push has helped keep China from slipping into a downward spiral where poor economic conditions and declining confidence feed off each other. The impressive size of China’s stimulus gets some credit for that: Along with the U.S. plan, it is one of the largest in the world. But the vestiges of China’s command economy have also proved useful.

“China is unusual in that it has this incredible capacity to mobilize all its institutions,” said Vikram Nehru, the World Bank’s chief economist for Asia. The government’s ability to direct bank lending and investment spending has meant its stimulus efforts have worked faster than many initially expected. “There is now a growing degree of confidence that the stimulus package is having an impact,” he added.

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In a joint statement, the four nations said private investment is evaporating this year and next year and “it is imperative that multilateral financial institutions should expand their lending to offset the massive decline.”

Existing resources for the International Monetary Fund are “clearly inadequate and should be significantly increased” they said, asking the IMF to speed up efforts to raise up to $11 billion by selling 400 tons of gold.

They also warned the U.S. and the European nations that share the euro that they needed economic policies that were “more balanced, proactive, coordinated and countercyclical” to promote global economic recovery.

See past CDT posts on the G-20 summit.

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Post tags: G-20, international monetary fund, World Bank
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