China Economic Review Blog

"Members of the [China Economic] Review team recently started a blog and it is definitely worth reading.  The blog does a good job of thoughtfully capturing everyday China, without excessive fawning or ranting.   

Today's post, entitled, "The road ahead," is on an article by Martin Wolf in the Financial Times postulating that China's government today is really very little different from the time of the emperors.  The post talks about how "just as emperors were marginalized from the decision-making process by bureaucrats, decentralized power is eating away at the might of the leadership. Fast-rising administrative costs and corruption - and analysis from the World Bank which suggests a sharp decline in the quality of governance between 1998 and 2004 - is presented as evidence of this."

The other day the blog did an interesting post called, "Bootstraps and bounty," about a marketing and development "love-in" put on by some of Shanghais business chambers.  The editor who did this post made the following insightful observations:

There were a few manufacturers there, but most of the attendees were young, enthusiastic and working for companies looking to make a buck out of the Chinese middle class, rather than save a buck on China's working class.  Even the one manufacturer I spoke to was making products for the domestic market. 

But what really surprised me was the number of Chinese marketing professionals in attendance. They were still out-numbered by expats, but as a greater-China born headhunter pointed out to me, there really is little substitute for hometown advantage in marketing. As a result, even as the lure of Chinese consumers creates plenty of job opportunities, expats are finding themselves competing with local Chinese for the same jobs, and the same salaries.

This signals a transition point in China�s growth trajectory. China�s position at the top table of world affairs relies not on continuing to churn out cheap goods for the Wal-Mart shoppers of the world, but on lifting the lot of local Chinese relative to its competitors. That journey starts with pay-parity at home, and the importance of this to Chinese cannot be under-estimated, and not just from a pride perspective.

I've added the China Economic Review blog to our blogroll.