Thomas Fricke says:
For years now, the threat of Chinese competition has been used as a bogeyman to force workers to accept lower wages, to cut social security spending and to praise Germany's proposed set of labor market and social system reforms (known as Agenda 2010). It was even enough to fill entire books by sensationalistic authors with more or less crazy theories about Europe's general demise.
That is now over. What has been observed for some time now has reached a spectacular new dimension since the outbreak of the financial crisis. Exports by Western companies to China have grown to such an extent, in such a short span of time, that there now are signs of a trend reversal. (At the same time, Asia's cost advantage has been dwindling.) Suddenly this huge country is emerging as a totally new growth factor. These changes, after 30 years of fear, are ushering in a completely new phase of globalization — one that will mainly benefit those countries that were most affected by cheap competition from China, including Europe's current crisis countries.
Although Germany has enjoyed rising exports to China for years, this phenomenon is not confined to Germany. French exporters are witnessing a similar boom.
Asia's two largest emerging market economies, China and India, together exceed Germany as an import destination by 60% to 70%. At the beginning of 2009, the figure was a mere 20%. Germany, for one, has heeded this import boom: Over the past few years, China has overtaken Belgium, Switzerland and Poland in the ranking of Germany's key export markets.
Read more here: http://www.theglobalist.com/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=9163
For years now, the threat of Chinese competition has been used as a bogeyman to force workers to accept lower wages, to cut social security spending and to praise Germany's proposed set of labor market and social system reforms (known as Agenda 2010). It was even enough to fill entire books by sensationalistic authors with more or less crazy theories about Europe's general demise.
That is now over. What has been observed for some time now has reached a spectacular new dimension since the outbreak of the financial crisis. Exports by Western companies to China have grown to such an extent, in such a short span of time, that there now are signs of a trend reversal. (At the same time, Asia's cost advantage has been dwindling.) Suddenly this huge country is emerging as a totally new growth factor. These changes, after 30 years of fear, are ushering in a completely new phase of globalization — one that will mainly benefit those countries that were most affected by cheap competition from China, including Europe's current crisis countries.
Although Germany has enjoyed rising exports to China for years, this phenomenon is not confined to Germany. French exporters are witnessing a similar boom.
Asia's two largest emerging market economies, China and India, together exceed Germany as an import destination by 60% to 70%. At the beginning of 2009, the figure was a mere 20%. Germany, for one, has heeded this import boom: Over the past few years, China has overtaken Belgium, Switzerland and Poland in the ranking of Germany's key export markets.
Read more here: http://www.theglobalist.com/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=9163
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