Author: Nicholas Lardy, PIIE

The imminent rebalancing of China’s economy has been forecast repeatedly over the past several years.

With the shrinking of China’s external surplus during 2011, proponents of this argument have all but declared victory. Read more…

Author: Vikram Nehru, Carnegie Endowment

Some Chinese astrologers have pronounced that 2012, the year of the dragon, will be particularly volatile.

But you do not have to believe in the Chinese zodiac to know that Southeast Asia is likely to have a tumultuous year. Read more…

Author: Vikram Nehru, Carnegie Endowment

Political and economic reforms and the lifting of international sanctions have set in motion Myanmar’s re-entry into the family of nations.

Already, the release of over 600 political prisoners and other economic and political reforms, including the re-registration of Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy for the 1 April by-election, have paved the way for the restoration of diplomatic relations with the US and other Western countries. Read more…

Author: Shankaran Nambiar, MIU, Malaysia

The Najib government has given renewed focus to Malaysia’s international economic relations, including liberalisation and increasing interaction with the global economy.

This approach is understandable for a small, open economy that is particularly dependent on export-driven growth, and faces considerable pressure to attract FDI and increase its exports. Read more…

Author: Suman Bery, IGC

India’s quick recovery from the post-Lehman slump of late 2008 is usually attributed to the relatively low global exposure of the country’s economy.

But this is an incomplete and perhaps misleading interpretation of what actually happened. Read more…

Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, East Asia Forum

The debate about rebalancing China’s economy so that growth is driven more by domestic consumption than by investment and exports intensified with the onset of the global financial crisis.

China’s high level of net savings and external surpluses, and industrial-country reliance on the cheap international capital that accompanied them, was no longer sustainable. Read more…

Author: Yiping Huang, Peking University

The international community, and particularly policy makers in the United States, put great expectations on the contribution that China can make to global economic recovery by rebalancing its economy through promoting consumption growth.

The Chinese authorities broadly accept this priority and have put in place a number of policy measures that aim to achieve it. Read more…

Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, East Asia Forum

China’s vice president, Xi Jinping, is set to make a hugely important visit to the US next week, prior to succeeding President Hu Jintao as China’s next president later this year.

The visit will set the stage for interaction between the next generation of Chinese leaders and American political leadership and help to shape how the most important bilateral relationship in the world will be managed over the medium-term future. Read more…

Author: Nicholas Lardy, PIIE

China’s 2009-10 stimulus program was quite successful: growth ticked down only slightly in 2009 while the rest of the world suffered its sharpest decline in 60 years.

But the stimulus program was not intended to address the longer-term structural problems that in 2007 led China’s premier, Wen Jiabao, to characterise the country’s growth as ‘unsteady, imbalanced, uncoordinated and unsustainable’. Read more…

Author: Choong Yong Ahn, Chung-Ang University

Since the fourth quarter of 2010, the global economy has faced serious uncertainty and a turbulent outlook.

Both the US and Europe have gloomy growth prospects due to a lack of credible medium-term plans for debt reduction in the US and the sovereign debt crisis in southern Europe. Read more…

Author: Andrew Elek, ANU

The World Bank recently published a valuable research paper (World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 5940 by Justin Yifu Lin and Doerte Doemeland) which presents the evidence needed to justify a globally coordinated initiative in carefully selected infrastructure investment.

A G20 initiative in 2012 could make this happen. Read more…

Author: Dilaka Lathapipat, TDRI

There is a widespread belief among Thais that immigrants reduce local workers’ job opportunities and depress wages.

This is evident from an opinion survey study conducted in late 2010 by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Triangle Project on public attitudes to migration and migrant workers. Read more…

Author: Abdur Chowdhury, Marquette University

Joining the WTO in 2012 marks the culmination of a long period of transformation for Russia, which first applied for membership in June 1993, and finally had its terms of entry accepted on 16 December.

To join the WTO, Russia has had to overhaul its national laws to bring them into conformity with the global trade regime, and work out bilateral market-opening deals with all other members. Russia has agreed to slash tariffs, get rid of industrial subsidies and allow foreign companies greater access to its domestic market. Read more…

Author: Nandita Dasgupta, UMBC

India’s food price inflation has been a major driving factor behind the country’s accelerating inflation over the past few years.

In particular, agricultural food prices rose sharply during 2011. Read more…

Author: M. Govinda Rao, NIPFP

India’s economy was one of the earliest to stage a turnaround after the global financial crisis.

The decisions taken in early 2008 to increase public-sector wages, forgive loans for farmers who had borrowed from the banks, and massively expand the rural-employment guarantee scheme assisted the economy before the global financial crisis unfolded in the last quarter of the year. Read more…