Author: Justin Li, ICE
Julian Dierkes’ thoughtful response to my essay on Chinese investment in Mongolia obliges clarification of some of my earlier points. I confess my ignorance of ‘Third Neighbour’ policy and, though one commentator suggests that it ante-dates large-scale Chinese investment in Mongolia and therefore cannot really be perceived as responding to that, it certainly helps to contextualise aspects of Mongolian foreign investment and trade policy.
It is important to take a closer look at the decision behind the controversial ‘east-west’ railway project approved by the Mongolian Parliament. Read more…
Author: Justin Li, ICE
The investment and trading relationships between China and Mongolia seems like a marriage made in heaven. Landlocked and poverty-stricken, Mongolia has an abundance of coal, copper and iron ore that China craves to feed its rapid industrialisation. Mongolia’s proximity to China, its largest customer, also offers it considerable cost advantages against other major commodities suppliers such as Australia and Brazil.
The trade and investment figures between these two countries certainly bear witness to a strong and complementary relationship. China has been the largest investor in Mongolia since 1998 and its largest trading partner since 1999, and it has retained these positions ever since. Read more…
Author: Justin Li, ICE
Chinese foreign direct investment is without a doubt one of the most discussed and debated topics in the world of international trade and investment. The sprawling tentacles of Beijing seem to be extending to the four corners of earth, wherever red dirt and black coal can be found. In the recently released statistical bulletin of Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) by the Ministry of Commerce, total stock of Chinese FDI had reached a staggering 1 trillion USD.
The rapid expansion of Chinese investment activities is unnerving politicians from Washington to Wellington. Perhaps the most controversial aspect of Chinese investment is Beijing’s appetite and apparent willingness to do business with lepers of the international system, such as Burma, Sudan and Iran. Read more…
Author: Justin Li, ICE
Once upon a time in China, a man by name of Ye Gong loved dragons so much that he decorated everything with the symbols of dragons. Yet, he was mortified when a real dragon descended from the heaven to pay him a visit. Last night when Liu Xiaobo finally brought the Nobel Peace Prize home, it was not greeted with jubilation over one of China’s native sons finally winning the coveted prize but with helpless anger and awkwardness by Beijing.
The award of the Nobel Peace Prize to one of China’s most famous dissidents could not have arrived at a more sensitive time as a heated debate continues to rage about the future of democratisation since Premier Wen Jiabao’s speech in Shenzhen in early August. Read more…
Author: Justin Li, ICE
On the thirtieth anniversary of the founding of the Special Economic Zone of Shenzhen, Premier Wen Jiabao’s much publicised speech on the significance of political reform in China sparked a wave of debate across China. ‘We must not only encourage institutional reform in economic life but also institutional reform in political life. Without the safeguard of political reform,’ he said, ‘the fruits of economic reform would be lost and the goal of modernisation would not materialise.’
Wen’s audacious championing of the imperative of political reform didn’t feature prominently on the official Xinhua news or main party mouthpiece, the People’s Daily. Read more…
Author: Justin Li, ICE
On 16 August, the Japanese Cabinet Office released Japan’s quarterly economic statistics. Its seasonally unadjusted GDP totalled US$1.29 trillion in the second quarter, slightly less than China’s US$1.34 trillion. This confirmed what pundits have been predicting for some time — that China’s GDP would surpass that of Japan this year.
China has finally managed to reclaim its coveted position as the premier nation in East Asia after more than three decades of reform and opening up to the wider world. In fact, China’s real GDP overtook that of Japan in 2001 measured at Purchasing Power Parity, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Read more…
Author: Justin Li, ICE
On 11 of July, China’s new professional rating agency, Dagong International Credit Rating Company, released its first ever report on the government debt risks of 50 countries. The report surveyed the 50 largest economies across the world including countries such as the US, China and Australia. In the words of Dagong, this is a historic occasion when a credit rating agency from a non-Western country published its report on government debt risks globally.
An eye-catching feature of the report is its assessment that the debt risk of the United States is higher than that of China. Read more…
Author: Justin Li, ICE
China’s civil aviation industry has recently been shocked by a series of scandals and many powerful officials from the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the major State-owned airlines have been either arrested or placed under investigation for corruption.
For seasoned China watchers, these scandals should not have come as surprise. Corruption scandals in China are about as common as sexual innuendos about sports stars in the West. Read more…
