NBC’s Brian Williams wins weekly ratings race, to interview President Obama in New Orleans
Brian Williams has landed an exclusive interview with President Barack Obama on Sunday in New Orleans. That day is the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina hitting the city.
The Obama interview will start Sunday on “NBC Nightly News,” which Williams will anchor. He is taking the telecast to the Big Easy on Thursday and will remain there through Monday. He also will moderate “Meet the Press” this weekend from New Orleans. That program airs at 9 a.m. Sunday on WESH-Ch. 2.
Williams won the ratings race last week among the nightly newscasts. “NBC Nightly News” averaged 7.4 million viewers for the week of Aug. 16. He was ahead of “ABC World News” (6.5 million) and “CBS Evening News” (4.9 million). Williams also had the edge in the 25-to-54 age group, which is most important to news advertisers. Williams averaged 2.2 million viewers in that age group to ABC’s 1.8 million and CBS’ 1.4 million.
ABC’s Diane Sawyer was off last week; George Stephanopoulos anchored Monday through Thursday, and David Muir did the honors on Friday. CBS’ Katie Couric anchored three nights last week: Monday from New York, and Thursday and Friday from Kabul, Afghanistan.
“We are not Machines:” Teen Spirit on China’s Shopfloor
By Mary E. Gallagher
This spring, a series of well-coordinated and successful strikes in foreign-invested enterprises in China made headlines all around the world. Young migrant workers openly and forcefully articulated demands for higher wages, better representation, and more consideration of their “spiritual” and mental well-being. These demands have led to increased speculation that China’s current economic boom is winding down, as its growth strategy founded in part on cheap migrant labor from rural areas faces domestic and international difficulties.
This is not the first time that Chinese workers have openly protested for higher wages, better treatment, and more job security. What makes this period more important and potentially much more consequential is the confluence of demographic, social and political trends that have increased the bargaining power of employees for the first time in two decades. Workers are now protesting in a position of relative strength after a long period of perceiving that the economic and political trends were against them.
Travelling to China three different times this summer has offered me some time to observe this phenomenon from different locations, different perspectives, and in different points of time – when large strikes were still occurring in June to now in late August where strike activity has quieted down. Foxconn’s management just unleashed their 50,000 strong “worker party” with domestic and international media showing bizarre photos of underpaid workers holding up posters of Terry Guo that say “Love Me, Love You, Love Terry.” New Life Movement ideology combines with the CCP’s “your factory is home” propaganda to create a mishmash of capitalist company-driven paternalism and “work-unit socialism:” low pay, Taylorist work organization, company control and oversight of a worker’s life, but without the security and benefits of the now quaint “iron-rice bowl.”
Demographic change
“The virtually limitless supply” of Chinese workers dries up
A key underlying factor in the rising wages and increased demands of China’s migrant workers are the labor shortages now evident in many coastal manufacturing regions, especially the Pearl River Delta. According to the Institute of Population and Labor Economics at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, labor shortages were first apparent in Guangdong in 2003. [1] They have now appeared in other major industrial regions, including the Yangtze River Delta around Shanghai and even in central China. There are a number of reasons for the labor shortage. First, the share of the working population is falling due to the effects of the one-child policy that began in the 1970s. This long-term demographic shift has important implications for the Chinese economy and for the sustainability of China’s ambitious social welfare programs. Second, policy changes and increased investment in agriculture have made migration to industrial jobs less attractive for some rural residents. Large-scale, government-sponsored infrastructure projects inland and the domestic stimulus package of 2009 are also providing jobs and opportunities closer to home. These changes inland have adjusted the calculus of migration.
Finally, the entrenched social and legal discrimination toward rural migrants remains a key barrier to their permanent resettlement as legal urban citizens. China’s household registration system (?? hukou) continues to classify citizens into two separate groups designated by place of birth as either “rural residents” or “urban residents.” Citizens of rural China, while now permitted to work temporarily in urban areas, are usually not able to gain legal urban citizenship. Lack of urban citizenship deprives them of many social welfare and social insurance programs, restricts educational opportunities for their children, and subjects them to greater risk of exploitation at the workplace. The hukou system also restricts labor mobility and increases segmentation in China’s labor markets. These institutional barriers to migration have also exacerbated the labor shortage.
A brouhaha between economists on the nature and future of the labor shortage has been in the works for some time. The Economists’ cover story of Chinese workers two weeks ago cited an article by Knight, Deng, and Li that is dubious about the staying power of the labor shortage because there are still tens of millions of rural Chinese who are underemployed in agriculture. [2] Once these “potential migrants” start to move, they argue, the shortages will be alleviated. Others such as Cai Fang, the head of the Institute of Population and Labor Economics at CASS, have written forcefully that China has reached the important “Lewisian turning point,” when labor scarcity begins to shift the economy away from input-driven growth to enhanced productivity, declining inequality, and greater domestic consumption.
I side with those like Cai Fang as seeing this period as a fundamental turning point. While it is true that there are still many “potential migrants” in the Chinese countryside, it seems clear from research that the institutional barriers of the hukou system are critical in dissuading these people (who are often older, have children and/or aging parents, and land) to take the risky plunge of moving to a life with hardly any security, little government support, and filled with the daily humiliations of discrimination and incrimination as a country bumpkin serving urban elites.
So would meaningful reform of the hukou system alleviate the shortages? Reform of the hukou system would increase migration and we might see a new flow of workers into the Pearl and Yangtze River Deltas. But as newly sanctioned urban citizens with hukou in hand, expectations would not decrease, but only rise: better jobs, more security, free education for their children, etc. This adjustment would not lower the cost of Chinese labor even if it improves the current shortages. Whatever happens to the migration and urbanization pattern of rural citizens going forward, the iconic figure of a young, shabby farmer making his way to the city for a limited amount of time with limited ambitions and expectations for his time there is giving way to young people who see the city as their future and, if not their birthright, as something that they have earned.
Social change
China’s new generation of migrant workers grows up
Not only are China’s migrant workers become scarcer, they are also more demanding, more rights conscious, and more attuned to the inequality of treatment and opportunity they face as second-class citizens in China’s modernizing cities. In interviews that I did in 2005 at a legal aid center in Shanghai, young migrant workers were always quick to point out the discrimination and bad treatment they suffered simply because government officials and employers believed that they can easily be intimidated due to their insecure legal status in urban areas. [3] Unlike their parents or elder siblings who compared their fortunes to what “would have been” if they had stayed in the countryside, these younger migrants compare themselves to their urban counterparts. Differences in treatment are no longer as readily acceptable.
Members of this younger generation are now working on assembly lines all over coastal China. These are children of the reform era. As single children or from very small families, they have been treated well by their parents and have not suffered the deprivations or political calamities that affected those born during the Cultural Revolution. They tend to be better educated and because of greater exposure to mass media and technology, they are more acclimated to city life than were their parents. Their expectations for the future are wider and different than earlier generations. Future plans rarely include returning to the countryside as farmers. Longer time horizons in cities and higher expectations for their futures are feeding their new demands.
My admittedly unscientific measure of this is the “hairstyle test.” Walk through a Chinese factory these days and look at the workers on the production line. What are they wearing? What technology do you see them using on their (albeit limited) downtime? What kind of hairstyle do they have? Do the girls have dyed red-hair? Japanese-straightening? Do the guys have the long, shaggy look currently fashionable among the younger set everywhere? How many are copying Rain, the popular Korean heartthrob? What kind of product do they use? Mousse? A bit of holding gel? These people are not going back to the farms.
Political change
The government and the party listen up
The Chinese central government has not been totally unresponsive to these changing dynamics. Widely publicized stories about the problems of migrants in Chinese society have led to policy changes and improvements in the legal protections offered at the workplace. For example, in 2003, the central government rescinded laws and policies that allowed local governments to detain migrants for improper documentation after it was widely reported that a young, rural college graduate was killed while in a detention center in Guangdong. In 2008 and 2009, the media published sympathetic accounts of migrant workers who had killed managers while embroiled in long and frustrating labor disputes. In the spring of 2010, the domestic media in China covered both the strikes and the suicides at Foxconn until the government decided to clamp down. Informal debates and discussions took place on-line about the nature of work in Chinese factories and why laws and regulations to protect workers are so frequently violated. The relative media openness on these issues is a good indication that the government is concerned and examining ways to improve conditions, though always with an eye toward maintaining social and political stability.
Government support for change can be seen beyond its toleration of sympathetic media coverage. It is also apparent in new laws and regulations and in the reforms and changes within the official Chinese trade union, the All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU).
In 2008, the Chinese government passed three ambitious labor laws to improve working conditions at Chinese companies and the employment security of Chinese workers. Employers criticized these laws as a return to the age of the “iron rice bowl” under socialism, which guaranteed lifetime employment and extensive welfare benefits for all urban workers. Labor activists hoped that the new laws would help close the gap between the high standards of Chinese “law-on-the-books” with its implementation and enforcement in reality.
These protective measures coincided with the onset of the global financial crisis and a rapid decline in China’s export markets. The combination of more protective laws and greater economic volatility led to a rapid and unprecedented increase in labor conflict, including legal filings and large-scale strikes and demonstrations. In the wake of China’s recovery from the crisis, this conflict has continued with newly confident workers now demanding wage increases and better representation. Labor disputes are highly concentrated in coastal provinces and cities with high levels of foreign-investment and export manufacturing.
The demands by some striking workers to elect their own representatives highlighted workers’ deep lack of confidence in the “official” representatives of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions. Chinese trade unions at the workplace level are closely tied to management and rarely have the will or the capacity to represent workers during disputes or bargaining. At the higher levels of the trade union, trade union officials are closely tied to their local governments and CCP, which strictly limits how far they can go in advancing the interests of workers at the macro level. I meet sincere and hard-working trade union officials at every conference and workshop in China on labor issues. I feel sorry for them; but I don’t have much hope for them.
The current Chinese government has attempted to expand the presence of ACFTU-affiliated unions in foreign-invested enterprises for some time in the hope that union presence in foreign firms will improve the government’s knowledge and surveillance of labor conflict. However, these initiatives have done little to improve workers’ confidence or trust in the union. The strikes of spring 2010 sharpened concern over this problem of representation, leading the central and local governments to call for new measures to empower unions and “worker representative committees” at the firm level. Local regulations are currently being drafted in Guangdong and Shanghai that stipulate collective wage bargaining between employers and workers through these institutions. These reforms are fascinating in their return to the institutions of the socialist workplace – the Workers’ Representative Councils. And surely attempts at implementation will frustrate managers and foreign investors who are used to calling the shots. But without significant institutional reforms to the trade union itself, including the system of leadership selection, compensation and job security of trade union leaders within the enterprise, and better support and training from higher-level unions, these reforms are unlikely to succeed.
The future of the “China Price”
The demographic, social, and political changes of China’s labor markets point toward a future of rising wages and rising social insurance costs. Government plans to expand and deepen coverage of rural citizens in pension and medical insurance programs will add to the costs of migrant labor. Reforms to the hukou system and further legalization of permanent, urban citizenship for rural Chinese, while improving labor mobility and reducing labor market segmentation, will increase the expectations of migrants as they transition from farm to the city. The development model that began in the early 1990s, founded in labor-intensive export manufacturing using very low-cost migrant labor, has begun to shift.
In comparative perspective, however, China’s attraction as a production locale will continue. Chinese wages, while increasing rapidly recently, are still low relative to wages in the developed world. [4] Inland China is increasingly attractive for investors as it offers preferential policies and improving infrastructure with lower wages and social insurance costs than the coastal regions. The attempts to lure Foxconn away from Shenzhen and its apparently depressed workforce by inland local governments is only the beginning of a new drive by investors to find places further afield that will bend over backwards to get money and jobs for their locality. By late June Foxconn had announced plans to build a plant in Zhengzhou; by August the company was recruiting 200,000 workers for its operations there.
In this way, central government support for better legal protections and trade union empowerment will be mitigated by local government competition for investment and the fact that implementation and enforcement of law are still the responsibilities of local governments. Trade unions are still under the control of the local party-state and beholden to local economic interests. While the trade union mission seems to be changing, its political position vis-à-vis the local government and party is not.
Muddling through this period of increased expectations and rising conflict is possible. The central government’s desire for change and its concerns about political legitimacy are balanced by local governments’ close ties to and reliance on investment and industry for growth and jobs. A key danger going forward is that popular expectations for change and improvements will exceed what local governments actually do.
Notes
[1] Fang Cai, “Approaching a Triumphal Span: How Far is China Towards its Lewisian Turning Point,” UNU-WIDER Research Paper, No. 2008/09, p. 9.
[2] John Knight, Deng Quheng, and Li Shi, “The Puzzle of Migrant Labour Shortage and Rural Labour Surplus,” Oxford Working Paper, Department of Economics.
[3] Mary E. Gallagher, “Mobilizing the Law in China: “Informed Disenchantment” and the Development of Legal Consciousness,” Law & Society Review, Vol. 40, No. 4 (Dec., 2006), pp. 783-816.
[4] Lett and Banister estimate that the average hourly compensation costs of China’s manufacturing workers in 2006 was $0.81. Even with significant wage increases since then, China’s manufacturing workers still make significantly less than workers in the developed world. Erin Lett and Judith Banister, “China’s Manufacturing Employment and Compensation Costs: 2002-06,” Monthly Labor Review, April 2009, pp. 30-38.
Mary E. Gallagher is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan and author of Contagious Capitalism: Globalization and the Politics of Labor in China (Princeton University Press, 2005).
Photo via China Digital Times.
‘Two and a Half Men,’ ‘The Big Bang Theory’ beat Miss Universe
Miss Mexico Jimena Navarrete wins Miss Universe in this Reuters photo by Steve Marcus.
More viewers were interested in Charlie Sheen than in Miss Universe last night. What do you think about that?
Miss Mexico, Jimena Navarrete, collected the crown, and the two-hour telecast averaged 6 million viewers on NBC.
More viewers were wowed by the CBS comedies “Two and a Half Men” (8.2 million) and “The Big Bang Theory” (also 8.2 million).
Here are the prime-time averages: CBS with 6.6 million, NBC with 5.8 million, Disney-owned ABC with 5.3 million, Fox with 4.2 million and The CW with 751,000. ABC and CBS tied for leadership in the 18-to-49 age group.
At 8 p.m., ABC’s “Bachelor Pad” averaged 5.9 million viewers over two hours. NBC’s “Minute to Win It” entertained 5.3 million. CBS’ “How I Met Your Mother” amused 5 million, and “Rules of Engagement” had 5.3 million laughing.
At 10, Miss Universe was in front, outpacing CBS’ “CSI: Miami” (6.5 million) and ABC’s “Dating in the Dark” (4.1 million). Fox offered a “House” repeat (3.4 million) and a new “Lie to Me” (5 million).
‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire’: Meredith Vieira loses her seat as game changes
Meredith Vieira starts a new season of "Millionaire" on Sept. 13. The photo is Courtesy of Valleycrest Productions Ltd.
How much does Meredith Vieira love “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire”?
So much she was ready to give up hosting the syndicated game show if she didn’t like sweeping changes, which will be on display when “Millionaire” starts its new season Sept. 13. It airs at 9 a.m. weekdays on WFTV-Ch. 9.
“If it changed in a way I was uncomfortable with, I was prepared to walk away,” Vieira said in a conference call with reporters today.
She could have done that?
“Absolutely,” she said. “If they were to change the entire game, I could walk away. It never reached that point.”
Vieira, who is also a co-anchor on NBC’s “Today,” said she liked the changes at “Millionaire.” The revisions were made without her input, but when she saw them, she said she found them “fantastic.”
The biggies? There’s no more hot seat; Vieira and the player stand. The questions and dollar amounts will be random in a 10-question first round. The amounts range from $100 to $25,000 in the first round. The second round features four questions valued at $100,000, $250,000, $500,000 and $1 million. And players get two “Jump the Question” lifelines, which allow a contestant to skip a question but lose out on the dollar amount for that query.
Why change the show, which is starting its ninth season in daytime?
“The producers felt it was getting very predictable,” Vieira said.
“For me, the hardest thing is learning the new rules so I don’t have to think about it,” Vieira said. “There’ s a lot of … details I have to remember. Once you get it down, it’s not brain surgery.”
She said all of her “Today” colleagues would do well on “Millionaire,” but Al Roker would do “extremely well” because he has “an amazing amount of trivia in his brain.”
Vieira’s advice to contestants? “The best thing to do is get a good night’s sleep,” she said. “People second-guess way too much because they’re nervous.”
And there’s a Disney tie-in here: “Millionaire,” which is produced by Valleycrest Productions, is distributed by Disney-ABC Domestic Television.
This week: Hurricane Katrina specials; summer finales for ‘Burn Notice,’ ‘Royal Pains’; ‘Big Brother’ ejects two; Liz Taylor on TCM
Pride in the New Orleans Saints is showcased in "If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don't Rise." The HBO photo is by Charley Varley.
Television will mark the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina in a big way this week.
The most ambitious program is Spike Lee’s “If God Is Willing and Da Creek Don’t Rise,” a continuation of his “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts.” That 2006 documentary won the Emmy and the Peabody.
The four-hour “If God Is Willing” premieres from 9 to 11 p.m. Monday and Tuesday on HBO. It immediately hooks viewers as Lee captures the jubilant city celebrating the New Orleans Saints’ victory in the Super Bowl.
But Lee is more concerned with efforts to rebuild the Big Easy. His many speakers include historian Douglas Brinkley, former FEMA head Michael Brown, actors Brad Pitt, Wendell Pierce and Sean Penn, singer Dr. John, CNN’s Anderson Cooper, former Mayor Ray Nagin, current Mayor Mitch Landrieu and Sen. Mary Landrieu.
Part one looks at the Super Bowl, public housing, FEMA trailers, politics, Charity Hospital and New Orleans food. But Lee also fits in the Haiti earthquake to put the Katrina disaster in perspective. Part two explores charter schools, the murder rate and the BP oil spill.
“If God Is Willing” is a spectacular-looking documentary, flashily edited, with haunting music by Terence Blanchard.
A sampling of other programs on Hurricane Katrina:
***”Dateline NBC” offers “Hurricane Katrina: The First Five Days” at 7 tonight. Brian Williams looks back at the NBC coverage, which was outstanding, and the program updates viewers on some memorable figures from five years ago. Williams will take “NBC Nightly News” to New Orleans Thursday through Aug. 30. He interviews Brad Pitt on Friday.
***PBS’ “Frontline” looks at how the New Orleans Police Department performed during the crisis in “Law & Disorder.” It debuts at 9 p.m. Wednesday.
***The Weather Channel presents “Forgotten on the Bayou” at 8 p.m. Friday.
***”Witness: Katrina” reconstructs the storm through survivors’ memories. The program debuts at 9 p.m. Monday on National Geographic Channel.
On the scripted front, USA’s “Burn Notice” and “Royal Pains” will offers their summer finales, starting at 9 p.m. Thursday. On “Burn Notice,” Michael (Jeffrey Donovan) struggles with a hostage crisis; the episode features guest stars Robert Patrick and Daniel Pino.
On “Royal Pains,” Hank (Mark Feuerstein) tries to treat a chatty socialite (Rena Sofer). The episode also features Patrick Heusinger, Henry Winkler, Campbell Scott, Brooke D’Orsay and Christine Ebersole.
Chi McBride’s many fans will be happy to know that he plays a prison guard on USA’s “Psych” at 10 p.m. Wednesday.
On the reality front, CBS’ highly addictive “Survivor” will eject two players in the 8 p.m. Thursday episode.
“Shaq VS” pits Shaquille O’Neal vs. Charles Barkley on the golf course at 9 p.m. Tuesday on ABC.
NBC’s “Minute to Win It” presents “Girls of Summer”-themed episodes at 8 p.m. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Monday’s episode will have a Miss Universe theme, which leads into the Miss Universe Pageant at 9 that night.
TCM continues its Summer Under the Stars festival saluting memorable actors.
Elizabeth Taylor is celebrated Monday, and the films include “Butterfield 8″ (her first Oscar winner) at 6 p.m., “Raintree County” at 8 p.m.; and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” (her second Oscar winner) at 11 p.m.
Lauren Bacall is the honoree on Wednesday, and TCM will play “To Have and Have Not” at 8 p.m. That’s the one in which she demonstrates how to whistle, impressing Humphrey Bogart and the world. Take a bow, Miss Bacall.
‘Central Florida Spotlight’ previews election, plans Tuesday special
Aubrey Jewett is pictured in this handout art.
WFTV-Ch. 9’s “Central Florida Spotlight” will be doing double duty in coming days.
The public-affairs program will preview Tuesday’s election in its regular show at 12:30 p.m. today (it repeats at 4 p.m. Sunday on WRDQ-Ch. 27).
Aubrey Jewett, a professor at the University of Central Florida, will assess the strengths and weaknesses of leading candidates. Deirdre Macnab of the League of Women Voters of Florida will focus on issues that could guide voter behavior.
A special “Central Florida Spotlight’ will air at 9 p.m. Tuesday on WRDQ. The program will draw on WFTV’s reporters, Election Night parties and in-studio analysts, including Linda Chapin and strategists Jim Kitchens and Jamie Miller.
“Facing Florida With Mike Vasilinda” will preview Tuesday’s primary election as well. The program airs at 12:30 p.m. Sunday on WFTV and at 4:30 p.m. Sunday on WRDQ. The guests are former governor’s chief of staff Pete Dunbar, who offers the Republican perspective, and Democratic strategist Screven Watson.
Casey Anthony: What public-relations advice would you give George, Cindy Anthony?
Cindy and George Anthony in court last month. The photo is by Red Huber of the Sentinel.
George and Cindy Anthony – ah, who knew they would give us so many lessons in mass media?
On NBC’s “Today,” the grandparents of slain toddler Caylee Anthony recently gave one of those interviews that left many viewers scratching their heads. The husband and wife have a habit of doing that.
What do the parents of Casey Anthony think they gain by going on television? Oh, yeah, they did get a trip to New York.
I heard from a lot of readers who were good and chapped about the Anthonys’ latest TV appearance.
But now the Anthonys are adrift in a confusing media world after their attorney, Brad Conway, stropped representing them. A previous attorney, Mark NeJame, couldn’t get the couple to follow his advice.
What public-relations advice would you give George and Cindy?
Stop doing interviews, I say. What do you say?
‘Dr. Phil, ‘The Doctors’ leaving WKMG, but not at the same time
Dr. Phil McGraw is shown in this AP Photo.
Do you know where your TV doctors are? You’ll want to keep these changes in mind:
1. “The Doctors” is departing WKMG-Ch. 6 and moving to WFTV-Ch. 9. The Emmy-winning program will air at 10 a.m. weekdays on WFTV, starting Sept. 13, and repeat at 8 each night on WRDQ-Ch. 27.
WKMG will replace “The Doctors” with ”The Nate Berkus Show” at 3 p.m. weekdays. Berkus isn’t a physician but he has worked miracles in design.
2. “Dr. Phil” is in its last season on WKMG. The Phil McGraw show airs at 5 weeknights, when it replaced local news but failed to generate impressive ratings.
“I’ve decided to move on to some other programming,” WKMG General Manager Skip Valet said. “I’m looking to improve the time period.”
Valet said he knows what the replacement will be, but wasn’t sharing that information.
Could it be news? Wouldn’t that be ironic?
“Dr. Phil” will move on to WOFL-Ch. 35 in fall 2011.
3. ”Dr. Oz” will log one more season on WESH-Ch. 2, then jump to WFTV-Ch. 9 to replace “The Oprah Winfrey Show” in fall 2011. But can anyone replace Lady O?
We’ll find out. Dr. Mehmet Oz, an Emmy-winner for his enthusiastic medical lessons, also will air at 9 weeknights on WRDQ-Ch. 27, just as Winfrey does.
Elsewhere in daytime … The CBS soap “As the World Turns” stops spinning Sept. 17. But “The Talk,” CBS’ answer to “The View,” won’t start until October. What can WKMG viewers expect at 2 p.m. weekdays in the interim? A package of CBS’ greatest daytime hits.
‘Covert Affairs’ renewed for second season by USA
Christopher Gorham and Piper Perabo are pictured in this USA Network photo by Robert Ascroft.
There’s more Piper Perabo in our future, and that’s a very good thing.
She will return as CIA trainee Annie Walker in a second season of “Covert Affairs,” USA announced today.
The action adventure drew its biggest audience so far this week: 5.4 million viewers.
“Covert Affairs” airs at 10 p.m. Tuesdays. The cast also includes the familiar TV actors Christopher Gorham, Sendhil Ramamurthy, Peter Gallagher and Kari Matchett.
So how do feel about that news, “Covert Affairs” fans?
Reading Round-Up: China Now the World’s Second-Largest Economy
This week came the not-unexpected news that China has passed Japan to become the world’s second-largest economy. Here, we’ve rounded up reactions to and analyses of the story:
• At his New Yorker blog, Evan Osnos asks “Why the Long Face?”, explaining that “While the story has rated front-page treatment in the U.S., it has sent China into a frenzy of self-flagellation, in the hope of reminding people that it is still home to a lot of very poor people.”
• Yoree Koh at the Wall Street Journal reports that Japan is taking the news of its third-place status with a shrug:
“It can’t be helped,” said Koichi Matsubara, 36, who works in real estate. “Business has been drifting overseas, our population is shrinking. We’re a small island, and given the size of our country, we were perhaps at the top longer than expected. I think we will continue to lose ground.”
• A few observers, however, are asking if China can maintain its sustained economic growth for much longer. Citing China’s heavy reliance on export-oriented development, as well as the country’s relatively low level of domestic consumption, some economists are instead looking to India to become Asia’s next hot economy, as James Fontanella-Khan of the Financial Times explains. Why?
First of all, unlike China, India isn’t rapidly getting older. In fact, its ratio of working-age people to dependents (children and the elderly) is actually improving.
Second — India’s government reforms, and its growing infrastructure spending, have helped create jobs, and dynamic labour market, and a vibrant private sector.
Finally, globalisation has helped India tap into both the goods export market, but more importantly, the global services exports market — which India now has a 2.6 per cent share of.
• Tom Lasseter, the Beijing bureau chief for McClatchey Newspapers, contemplates that problem of low domestic consumption at his “China Rises” blog. Writing about the story at a microeconomic level — as it relates to his choices when buying a new bicycle — Lasseter concludes that “For a country that wants to drive up domestic consumption, widespread worries about product quality and scant legal recourse to assuage those concerns is a serious issue.”
• At Forbes, Gady Epstein advises readers to take a step back and consider whether or not this story deserves the breathless headlines it’s been generating:
But do we really need a quarterly statistic to tell us anything we don’t already know about these two economies? There is not much value in debating the matter other than for the fun of the headlines and the hype.
We already know that China is the world’s second economic center of gravity now after the U.S., and in important ways is the dominant center of gravity: It has long been the economy that draws every big company in the world seeking growth, and which sets global markets in most commodities . . . When China, growing as quickly as it does, becomes a net importer of something, that is the vital turning point for prices going forward, and it didn’t take until the second quarter of 2010 for this to become true. This has been true for most of the last decade.
• And Joshua E. Keating at Foreign Policy asks “How Do We Know That China’s Economy Is Really Bigger Than Japan’s?” For those of us who need a quick review of college macroeconomics, Keating is a helpful guide as he talks through the various ways a country can estimate its GDP.