China is poised to become the engine of the world economy this century but Japan's failure to tackle its bad debt problem could scuttle any early return to significant global growth, a leading economist said yesterday.
Kenneth Courtis, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs Asia, said China was poised to become the global economic powerhouse of the 21st century, rivaling the impact the US had during the last 100 years.
"One of the strongest positives for the world economy is what is going on in China. I believe that we are in a process which doesn't happen every 50 years, it is only once every three or four hundred years when something this big, this all embracing, happens.
"I think its pretty clear that unless something pretty dramatic and unexpected happens in the next couple of decades, the dominant economic fact of this century will be the rise of China," Courtis told the Hong Kong Business Summit.
Premier Zhu Rongji (
But Courtis warned that despite China's "economic miracle" and its potential impact on the world, global growth would continue to be sluggish for some time yet.
The largest threat to any immediate China-led global economic recovery was Japan's moribund economy and its debt plagued banking sector.
Bad loans held by Japanese banks were estimated by the government at ?43.2 trillion (US$354 billion) at the end of March, but many private sector analysts believe the figure is much higher.
"Bad debts are not like good wine, they do not get better with age," he said.
Stephen Garrett, a 27-year-old graduate student, always thought he would study in China, but first the country’s restrictive COVID-19 policies made it nearly impossible and now he has other concerns. The cost is one deterrent, but Garrett is more worried about restrictions on academic freedom and the personal risk of being stranded in China. He is not alone. Only about 700 American students are studying at Chinese universities, down from a peak of nearly 25,000 a decade ago, while there are nearly 300,000 Chinese students at US schools. Some young Americans are discouraged from investing their time in China by what they see
MAJOR DROP: CEO Tim Cook, who is visiting Hanoi, pledged the firm was committed to Vietnam after its smartphone shipments declined 9.6% annually in the first quarter Apple Inc yesterday said it would increase spending on suppliers in Vietnam, a key production hub, as CEO Tim Cook arrived in the country for a two-day visit. The iPhone maker announced the news in a statement on its Web site, but gave no details of how much it would spend or where the money would go. Cook is expected to meet programmers, content creators and students during his visit, online newspaper VnExpress reported. The visit comes as US President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to ramp up Vietnam’s role in the global tech supply chain to reduce the US’ dependence on China. Images on
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
US CONSCULTANT: The US Department of Commerce’s Ursula Burns is a rarely seen US government consultant to be put forward to sit on the board, nominated as an independent director Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday nominated 10 candidates for its new board of directors, including Ursula Burns from the US Department of Commerce. It is rare that TSMC has nominated a US government consultant to sit on its board. Burns was nominated as one of seven independent directors. She is vice chair of the department’s Advisory Council on Supply Chain Competitiveness. Burns is to stand for election at TSMC’s annual shareholders’ meeting on June 4 along with the rest of the candidates. TSMC chairman Mark Liu (劉德音) was not on the list after in December last