Hello, welcome to visit Shanghai Forum
The Chinese economyhas connected with all these key pillars of the world economy, but also facingcertain historic opportunities to take a leading role in this great equation.
Reporter：Edward Allen
Professor Lim Hua Sing gave a lecture on state of the present worldwideeconomic crisis and its impact on the Chinese economy. The speech concludedwith some thoughts as to howChinashould strive to take advantage of and take the lead in certain areas of theworld economy during the years ahead.
The content of Professor Lim’s speech was divided into four sections,which also represented a provocative division of the present world economy intofour areas. Firstly, he discussed the present state of the U.S. economy, inrecent history the healthiest and most robust of any, but recently on aninexorable slide downhill. Responsibility for theU.S.’s extremely large tradedeficit was given to historic presidential initiatives to encourage beyond areasonable point domestic consumption and a culture of imports, which had leadto a depreciating dollar against the Japanese Yen. Professor Lim followed thiswith a discussion of the “financial storm” in the European Union, plagued withknotty and apparently unsolvable problems of high inflation, persistentunemployment and financial deficits across the board. This information came tothe participants at a time when the situation inGreece,Spainand other European countries was no familiar to many. The third stop was theJapanese economy, which despite undergoing what Professor Lim called twentyyears of gloom has managed to avoid a financial crisis. Credit for this must goto well integrated Japanese companies, which agreed to acquire over 96% ofbonds issued by the Japanese government over the past few years. Despitedownturns in exports and manufacture, the support of governments and companieshas ensured a small trade surplus built on a technological and creativesuperiority that brings low unemployment through a neatly organized andrelatively liberal employment program.
These considerations put the situation forChinaas Professor Lim saw it in amore sophisticated light. Professor Lim saw the Chinese economy has connectedwith all these key pillars of the world economy, but also facing certainhistoric opportunities to take a leading role in this great equation. Recentacquisitions of foreign reserves, generally profitable government participationand the controlled but stimulating injection of ‘hot money’ into the markethave complemented well a generally conservative investment temperament that hasseen Chinese levels of savings consistently top the world rankings, reaching52% according to Professor Lim’s figures.
But, there remained several major challenges which Professor Lim saw aspotentially derailing to this enviable progress. The first was the impact ofpollution and the problem of the climate, which Professor Lim took as anextremely serious and ever more serious threat to the health of the Chineseeconomy. This was a common theme of the debates on both days, often creeping into a topic unrelated to pollution, and clearly represented a considerationProfessor Lim would urge any Chinese organizing body to take a strong line on. Thesecond factor was the poor-rich disparity inChina,which connected with well-known disparities in wealth betweenChina’s Easternand Western regions.
Professor Lim talked about what he saw as one of the most serious andunspoken problems – that is the dire economic straits that local governmentsfind themselves in, since the central government has given ever decreasingamounts of support to these bodies. As far as Professor Lim could see theproblem, it was only through the establishing of a waterproof,well-administered and guaranteed non-corrupt system for the sale of localgovernment bonds that these hundreds and thousands of local administrationscould keep themselves afloat and dynamic. Professor Lim agreed with wordsspoken during the morning’s presentation by a professor of the ChineseEnvironment, who expressed concerns at how a local system of administration andeconomic growth that was in many areas largely built on government businessesdoing government sponsored work on government land could be carried on to theprofit of its proprietors and the benefit of all any further. This reflected anissue with China’s development of its critically unstable and threateningreliance on central directives at the base level, and it represented a securitycomplex that could only be broken by throwing local economies into the realworld of bonds and trading, as well as, Professor Lim argued, a well organizedsale of state land to creditable developers, as a way of securing revenue forlocal governments and looking to make these developers compete and find moreeconomically productive and perhaps culturally appealing models.
In addressing these issues, Professor Lim was agreeing for the most partwith comments made in the morning forum which he had chaired. Participantsstressed with particular emphasis the need for a new, coherent policy on landas the only way thatChina’sresources can be utilized in a way that continues to demand growth. With hiswide-range of experience in housing markets and the cost-of-living in EastAsia, Professor Lim was not the only voice expressing disbelief at the cost ofland in certain parts ofChina,a problem that can only be addressed with a more open land policy.
Seeing as the second and final day of this year’s conference took placeinFudanUniversity,Professor Lim quite naturally moved into a discussion of education and itsrelevance to the concept ofAsia. ProfessorLim expressed his concern that after over twenty years of work atJapan’sWasedaUniversityhis institution remains oneof the few with extensive links to universities and faculties inChina, with a modest but steady stream oflanguage students arriving in Fudan every year fromJapan. Looking to the future ofAsia over the next ten years, it will be especially necessary to put moreconcerted and intelligent effort than has been done at present in order tobring a greater number of students from across Asia to study and learn inShanghaiand othercities. This is a key issue to the consciousness of messages and ambitions putforward by the whole forum, and requires effort not only in China to attractmore and better candidates from Asia and across the world, but also initiatives– no doubt based on international governmental cooperation – to raise theinterest of Japanese students who wish to study in China as well as Chinese tostudy in Japan. The potentials behind this academic exchange and its importancefor confirming and bringing real historic and cultural evidence to the questionof Asia 2011 – 20, is undeniable. These ideas represent both a confirmation ofthe worth of the debates at this year’s forum, and also a challenge to bringthem into an all-round and inclusive Asian universe.
Introduction：
Lim Hua Sing, professor of WasedaUniversity, Tokyo. His field of specialization is overseas Chinese and EthnicChinese Economies; Asian Economies; International Economics.
