Summary: In this episode of China Money Podcast, well-known British writer and China expert Jonathan Fenby gives his diagnosis of China’s long-term challenges. Will the world’s second largest economy go on to surpass the U.S. in a couple of decades? Or, is an apocalypse in the cards? Listen to the podcast above, or read an excerpt below. Q: In your latest book, Tiger Head, Snake Tails, you point out that China’s future dominance is far less certain than people have been led to believe. Why is that? China has certainly achieved a lot in the past thirty years. But China is now in a stage where it must rethink its economic model. The assumption that China will continue in the rapid pace of economic growth and that it will bring in political dominance is far from established. Its economy needs re-balancing, reshaping and remodeling. China will spend the next ten years or so on getting its economic model up and running rather than thinking about dominating the rest of the world. Q: The Chinese government certainly understands that the model needs to be changed, but with the complicated system now China finds herself in, it seems hard to find a starting point? The difficulties with reforms in a situation like China after all those years of growth is that everything is interconnected. If you start reform in one area, for example, if you privatize farm land, people can then build up much more efficient farms in China. That would be good, but if you do that, the local authorities which own the farm land and rely on selling them for revenues, they will need to introduce new tax systems to give the local authorities much more power to raise taxes locally and spend it themselves. If that happens, Beijing will lose an element of control over local authorities. Another example is energy and water, which is under-priced in China. If you freed water prices and they rose rapidly, it will have an effect on inflation. If you can start in one place, I would say the one area where you could consider is the Hukou registration system. You could allow migrant workers, especially second generation migrant workers, greater rights and the possibility to buy properties in the cities. Our Guest Today Jonathan Fenby is co-founder and managing director of the China research team at UK-based consulting firm, Trusted Sources. He is formerly editor of the UK newspaper, The Observer, and Hong Kong-based daily, South China Morning Post. A prolific writer, he has published 12 books in the last 14 years. His latest book, Tiger Head, Snake Tails: China Today, How it Got There and Where it is Heading, analyzes China’s future.
