Cars, cars, cars
China in 2009 overtook the United States as the world’s biggest car market (thanks, King!). It’s huge. Never in history has any country surpassed the American car market. This is great news for China, horrible news for the environment, and maybe even worse news for the world’s limited supply of fossil fuels. I’m reading a book called Green Metropolis right now, and the stat they use is that America currently uses 25% of the world’s fossil fuels. 25%! And we’re only a country of 300 million. What is going to happen when a country of 1.3 BILLION suddenly adopts American lifestyles? As a planet, we’d better find a way to stop this dependence on liquid energy. I don’t know if this is good news for us. Do they buy our cars?
In other China business news, China has just surpassed Germany to become the world’s top exporter. Again, great news for China, not so great news for…us? When are we going to start jumping onto the export market? Outside of cutting spending, there’s only one way to cut a deficit, and it’s to sell stuff to other people. What are we going to sell? Cars? I’ve got a feeling that our cars aren’t cheap enough to sell to the Chinese, and we don’t make a lot of luxury brands (although in Japan, Miller beer was supposed to be high end…go figure…). It also says in the article that China is poised to surpass Japan this year as the world’s second biggest economy.
One of the researchers seems to think it’s mostly a matter of population:
“Eventually, though I don’t expect this for another 20 years or so, the [Chinese] economy will be bigger than that of the United States,” Kroeber said. “People are just going to have to get used to these facts — and to remember that most of these facts are simply reflections of China’s enormous population, and do not in any way indicate leadership in technology, innovation or productivity.”
I don’t know about that. Sure, that statement may reflect the status quo, but our “leaders” in technology still have freedom to travel back to China, and they do.
Economically, we’re in for some interesting times…
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I’m in china right now, and let me tell you, the west have no clue how fast china is developing and changing. Absolutely no clue. I, who would consider myself relative knowledgeable on china compared to the average america, again got my eyes pulled wide open. You really can’t understand the pace of development until you see it yourself.
And i think the quote that the chinese will not lead in tech and innovation is wrong. The chinese are very cognizant of the value of tech and innovation leadership, and absolutely want to move up the value chain. It’s just that for the last 30 years, it’s been far easier to just copy what already works from the rest of the world. Once they reach equilibrium, they will innovate like crazy. At CES, Haier just demonstrated a completely wiresless tv – power and signal over the air. The energy, drive and determination on the faces of the chinese I’ve personally seen, from young engineers in the city to rural grannies pulling carts of vegetables, is awesome to witness.
The more I see of china, the more I realize we americans are f*cked. Seriously. That’s not to say chinas doesn’t have it’s own problems. Just that I don’t see anything that can stop them now.
You’re right to teach your kids chinese.
Power and signal over the air? Signal I could understand, but power? Wow.
I sure hope China puts more time and energy into research for science. We’re not doing enough here. I’m going to be envious of my own two kids when they can travel and communicate with the world that I only knew from my books!