3.3.5

• 3 main reasons that china‘s economy has slowed in recent years

  • Real estate sector crisis - overbuilding, unsustainable debt levels and decling property values - imbalances
  • Demographic challenges -aging population and declining birth rate - reduced labour force
  • Trade and geopolitical tensions - particular with the USA, they have disrupted supply chains and effected exports
• chinas belt and road initiative (BRI)

  • Large scale infrastructure project - to connect Asia to Europe and Africa through land and sea routes
  • Aims to boost economic and regional growth by building Railways,roads and ports
  • Cost = $1 trillion
  • Indonesia/Nigeria/kenya - roads and Pakistan-Chinese ports
  • BRI popular early on
  • Due to covid many countries couldn't pay the money back even more money had to be taken from banks
  • Shift to small, sustainable, green projects
• how is china viewed by the rest of the world?

  a global superpower with significant impact all around the world

  • positively - invested in African countries such as Ghana and Kenya
  • negatively - Taiwan and Tibet
  • powerful - 2nd largest GDP in the world
  • feared - tiwan as they fear Chinese invasion (becoming more likely since Russia invaded Ukraine)
• • China economic boom collided with a positive demographic dividend - more people of a productive age with a low dependency ratio
  • Negative demographic dividend - associated with rapid aging - will soon affect china
  • people live longer - either need to accumulate wealth or face reduction in old age.
• • china economic growth showed signs of slowing in 2015 - between 1978-2012 the annual growth was 10% - growth began to slow to 7-8% (2024=5%)
  • 2017 - primary industary accounted for 8% GDP - secondary = 40% - tertiary = 52%. This reflected the shift in chinas economy.
• Mao

  • 1949-76 - goverment locational decisions were dominated by Marxism - a socialist, collectivist and centrally planned agenda
  • great leap forward - economic and social campaign - led by Chinese Communist Party (CCP) - they wanted to develop labour intensive methods of industrialisation - emphise manpower over machines
  • 1949-70s - manufacturing was almost entirely by state owned enterprises (SOEs) - mainly heavy industarys such as oil, chemicals, power, iron and steel.
  • Town and village enterprises (TVEs) - produced heavy goods - iron, steel, cement, chemical fertiliser and farm tools
• Deng

  • after Maos death - 1976 - china economy took a major change.
  • 1978 open door policy - moved towards a social market economy
  • Development of manufacturing industarys, service and financial industries and agriculture - rapid economic growth— expansion of manufacturing sector
  • since 1979 - five special economic zones (SEZs) and 14 open cities have been established - reduced restrictions on land, labour, wages, taxes and planning regulations to overseas firms - especially those involved in high-tech industries.
  • Result has been the emergency and dominance of economic activity in coastal areas.