Nobel Prize Laureate Optimistic about China's EconomyWinner of the Nobel economics prize Robert W. Fogel said he is optimistic about China's economic situation and prospects.The professor from the University of Chicago was among some 150 Chinese and foreign scholars and experts who gathered in this port city in east China's Fujian Province recently to attend the international symposium on "Urbanization: Challenge and Strategy in the New Century". Fogel described China as one of the emerging industrialized economies, noting that it can refer to some experience of the western developed countries, but cannot copy their mode of development due to its uneven economic development. China has surpassed the United States in terms of coordination in economic growth, which is seen in its rapid urbanization process, he said. China's urban population climbed from 19 percent in 1980 to 30 percent in 1995. Meanwhile, the life expectancy of Chinese people also experienced a significant increase despite problems in housing and other infrastructure. In contrast, the urbanization process in the United States lasted for 30 years from 1860 to 1890, which was not only longer but also brought a considerable decline in the people's living standards, a deterioration of people's health and a higher death rate, said Fogel. In U.S. slums, the infant death rate was close to 50 percent during the urbanization period. Whereas China's per capita income lags behind the United States by almost 100 years, popularization and quality of primary school education lags behind by 50 years and secondary school education by 30 years, said Fogel. He named eight emerging economies in Asia that call for close study. These include the "four little dragons" of Singapore, the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Taiwan province and the Republic of Korea, as well as China's mainland, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia. The GDP of these eight economies, having experienced an annual growth rate of 10.7 percent in the 15 years from 1980 to 1995, is equal to that of the five largest European countries and four fifths of that of the United States, said Fogel. Even if the European and the U.S. economies grow at an annual rate of above 4 percent, the GDP of these emerging economies will total 60 trillion U.S. dollars by 2030, 15 percent higher than the total of Europe and the United States, said Fogel. With the rapid economic growth, China will soon catch up with the United States in terms of technology, and will experience changes in consumption structure, he said. He predicts further expansion of China's auto market, noting that China's purchasing capacity will be equivalent to today's world total by 2004. The medical and health care sectors will constitute a new area for China's economic growth, said Fogel. If China's GDP continues to grow at 8 percent annually in the coming 30 years, the proportion of medical and health care expenses will rise from the present less than 3 percent to 8.5 percent of the GDP. Development of the medical and health care sectors will accelerate the development of manufacture, education, finance services, communications and civil construction sectors, he noted. The symposium, which opened last Wednesday, focused on China's urbanization, the government's role in the urbanization process, and issues concerning the countryside and cities as well as rural and urban residents. Urbanization is one of the major issues to be tackled in China' s tenth five-year plan (2001-2005) for social and economic development. |
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