As I said yesterday, Aussies are paying close attention to Presidential election primaries and to fluctuations in the US economy.
The sharp drop in the share market that began here last month is attributed to fears of a recession growing out of policies shaped in Washington, D.C. The great majority of the well-informed here can hardly wait for a “regime change” in America and they expect the US to be on a saner course by this time next year.
But for hope of safety in rough economic seas, folks here are looking elsewhere, toward China.The supply of iron, alumina, coal, and other raw materials to China as its vast population moves up from poverty is buoying Australian prosperity now and is counted on to continue to do so.
The old economic health analogy, therefore, is applied to that country, not the US. An article in “The Australian” newspaper this week, headlined “China’s bubble quivers,” said, “If China catches a winter cold, Australia sneezes.”
Trade between these two countries topped $50 billion in the last financial year, the article by China correspondent Rowan Callick said, and nearly half of that amount came from the sale of resources from Australian mines.
“This dictates,” Callick wrote, the need to pay as much attention “to pronouncements from Zhongnanhai, the Chinese leaders’ citadel next to the Forbidden City, as from the Federal Reserve in Washington.”The importance of these pronouncements is heightened by the fact that China has a “planned economy” ruled by a single party. Interpreting them, however, even when they are in English, is not easy.
Callick cites one recent pronouncement and then spends several paragraphs detailing the special meanings English words take on in the Zhongnanhai context.
Premier Wen’s statement to leaders preparing for a parliamentary session addressed global economic uncertainties and “new difficulties and contradictions in our economic development,” and from it Callick mines the following information.
* Premier Wen and other China leaders anticipate that if a Democratic President is elected in the US, there will be a shift in trade-barrier discussions and greater demand that China sign up to a climate change agreement, which Europeans are pushing for now.
* Rapid growth has led to serious pollution problems and a troubling wealth gap in China.
“This demands democratic and scientific decision making from the government,” Premier Wen Jiabao said. But don’t read that sentence too quickly.
According to Callick, “democratic” here means adjusting policy to meet people’s concerns and “scientific” implies “energy-efficient and sustainable.” It is the government that will decide what is needed to meet people’s concerns and what is sustainable.
Folks here take some comfort in the fact that our new Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, is fluent in one Chinese language. Me, too.
It may be that we’re all going to be needing to learn some new terms and new meanings for old terms during “the Year of the Rat” that begins February 7, a year Premier Wen expects to be “most difficult,” a year in which ever greater attention is going to be paid to pronouncements from … where was that? … oh, yes … from Zhongnanhai.
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