Can Iran Learn Anything from Chinese Experience?

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varjavand
by varjavand
18-Aug-2010
 

Can Iran Learn Anything from Chinese Economic Experience?

Latest breaking news from China indicates that Chinese GDP is expected to surpass Japan which is now the second largest economy in the world. If US and China continue to grow at their current growth rate, the Chinese GDP will surpass that of the US after nine years? Surprising? No. According to the data supplied by various sources show that the Chinese economy has grown between 8 to 14% per year since 1991. Even though, all other major economies are in turmoil, this economy is still growing at a high rate, 8.7% for 2009. The Chinese GDP has been growing on a non-stop basis at a healthy rate for the past 20 years, defying the theory of business cycles.

China has been quite successful in exploiting the market forces to its advantage. Since 1978, when market-based reforms were introduced to Chinese economy, its GDP has increased more than twelvefold.Thanks to pragmatic approach to market system. Deng Xiaoping once described their economic system as “Capitalism with Chinese characteristics. He also once said, “It doesn’t matter whether the cat is black or white, so long as it catches mouse” indicating the emphasis on pragmatism by the Chinese leadership when it comes to economic approach as well as to foreign policy, which is primarily based on building welcoming relationship with other countries, especially with its neighbors, the so called “smile Diplomacy”. The successful Chinese experience will definitely point to the fact that a sensible diplomacy, based on mutual respect, plays a decisive role in economic development at the age of globalization. Positive image building has been at the top of the Chinese global agenda as manifested by its successful hosting of the 2008 Olympics. Today, many of its old enemies are its strong trade partners. In other words, China has tried to diffuse the legacy of fear and domination and engage in confidence building and securing support of its neighbors and major trade partners. To that end, trade barriers have been dismantled and export-promoting policies have been put into operation, especially through public enterprises (P.E.’s). China’s heavy industries have grown and are operating profitably. They saved a big share of their profit to plow back into the state-owned companies as investment. Consequently, China need not rely on individuals for saving; most of the investible funds come from public enterprises. To seek the support of other countries, China has extended its financial aids to many countries with no string attached, especially to the African nations. Accordingly, there has been a tremendous flow of valuable resources to this country from Africa and from the Middle East. One of the costly drawbacks of the Bush administration’s foreign policy, which was mainly based on a unilateral approach, was that it helped China to shun away from being the focus of world criticism for its poor record of human rights because that honor had gone to the U.S. The decline in the role of the U.S. since the invasion of Iraq has served China quite well in gaining its power as the moral and economic authority, and has turned it into a dependable world stakeholder.

Chinese politics have been influenced by its desire to progress economically. Its government has been very decisive, and this decisiveness has helped to successfully attract foreign investment by providing these investors a sense of assurance and a safety net backed by a strong and a resolute government. What makes this country distinctively successful in its quest for economic prosperity are:

1)    High rate of saving, making this country self sufficient and not at the mercy of other countries for funds. The rate of capital formation has been high; more than 25% per year in recent years. Most of such investments are in infrastructures of the country, thus facilitating the long term growth of the economy. Even though the foreign multinational enterprises have invested in China, theirs has played a minor role and most of the public investment in China is financed by savings by government enterprises;

2)    The cost of capital has been tremendously low or possibly near zero giving Chinese business firms a competitive advantage over foreign counterparts. In addition, exports promotion policies have been very successful in placing this country at the top of high export countries, with huge surplus and huge foreign exchange reserves which is nearly $1.5 trillion at this time;

3)    Chinese government does not allow excessive speculation in the stock market, especially by individuals. Avoiding such destabilizing speculations creates an additional safety net for investors. Even though this country has experienced a boom in real estate, just as the United States did, if the price bubble burst in China, the consumers are not going to suffer as much as they did in the U.S., because most of the real estate properties are owned by institutional investors and by the public enterprises. Therefore, if there are losses, most of them will be absorbed by the Chinese public sector;

4)    China has a reputation for being a low-price producer in the world, thanks to inexpensive labor and to the state-owned subsidized business entities. That is why consumers in the U.S. can enjoy low prices at Wal-Mart and at almost all the other stores; finally,

5)    Another unique positive factor concerning China is that since most of its government’s revenue is generated from public enterprises, the tax burden for the private sector is fairly light. The corporate sector pays only 7% of the total taxes. Such a system has made government budget more unwavering because its revenue is almost resection-proof. Can Iran learn anything from Chinese experience? 

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varjavand

Dear commenters:

by varjavand on

Thanks for your insightful comments, may I add the following to what you have already said: Just as any real estate agent would tell you, there is only one rule you should follow when buying a house: location and location and location, meaning that the value of a house depends primarily on its location. Likewise, economists will tell you that economic growth entails one requirement: population, population and population. Not only the size but more importantly the quality of population matter. There are many heavily populated countries in the world and they are poor because sheer size is necessary but not sufficient per se. China has tremendous advantages in both respects.

 Chinese government has made massive across the board investment in education. Consequently, labor productivity has surged in this country in recent years further contributing to its GDP. Not only the level of education but also workers attitude in China believed to be really favorable instead adversarial. They really care about the economic progress of their country. Productivity has increased not only in industrial sector it has also gone up in agricultural sector. In other worlds, Chinese economic growth has not taken place at the expense of destroying the rural areas. Currently, about 55% of China’s population still lives in rural areas. Even though, china has a strong central government, its economic policies are based on feedback from local people and diffusion of power. Chinese economic as well as political structure is becoming more and more open and sensitive to the new ideas and inclined to give and take approach.


IRI

yes Yolanda

by IRI on

yes Yolanda you got it. America is becoming more and more like a third world nation. funny that many Americans still don't know enough about geography and what's happening to the world. it's governments plan to keep people dumb is coming back to hunt the people and the country needs to import intelligence to get their most vital parts of economy and technology up to date.
Asia is the future because. Hopefully Iran will be at a level that the world can't bully it and rule its people with love of Iran.


yolanda

.....

by yolanda on

Thank you for your interesting and informative article. I just got back from Beijing less than 4 hrs ago and witnessed China's economic miracle 1st hand. I feel that Chinese people and government really want to improve people's standard of living.......from what I saw Beijing is even better than LA in many areas......the big difference between China and Iran is that there is no theocracy in China and people have pretty liberated mind-set.......I hope Iran will start to put developing economy above the religious ideology.

Thank you for sharing!


varjavand

Dear Commenters;

by varjavand on

What I hope to be able to communicate via this post is that complete economic and political freedom is not the prerequisite for economic growth especially at the early stages of economic development. As the historical experiences including that of Japan and China show, a strong, benevolent, value-free, government can generate economic progress effectively through prudent policies. The officials of the IRI keep claiming that they have achieved a considerable degree of economic success even though they have been constrained by sanctions. I wish they present some facts and figure to back up their claims.

I still believe that overcrowding is not a hindrance per se as long as the infrastructures of the big cities are adequate enough to accommodate population.

 

 


Fred

Iranians to staff the China model

by Fred on

The idea of “China model” for the Islamist Rapist Republic is a old one. During The billionaire mullah Rafsanjani's eight year “presidency” back in the 90s he and his courtiers used to talk about it a lot.

Needless to say because of variety of reason, the least of which is Iranians’ historical thirst for complete freedom and China models controlled economic freedom only it went nowhere.

Then comes the idea of having more children to staff this China model which the Islamist Rapists have had an on and off relationship with. Nowadays Ahmadi is paying people 10,000,000 worthless Rial to have a child in a country where unemployment number is not something to be proud of.

Of course the writer of this blog in a decidedly non satirical write up in another piece( link below) has made the argument for having more Iranians is better.

The wisdom of  his “defying-conventional-wisdom”  argument will only be known once people put their back into it and the reward does its job.

 

//iranian.com/main/2008/defying-conventional-wisdom


MRX1

Not one bit!

by MRX1 on

Chinese are hard working industrious and nationalist people. We Iranian are lazy self centered people, who managed to destroy our country because some charlatan promised us that the money from sale of oil will be delivered to our houses so we can seat on our fat  asses and do nothing all day!

Furthermore, chinese people may not have political freedom by western standard but they just about have every social and economical liberty at their disposal. We can't even dress up the way we want in Iran, go figure the rest....


Maryam Hojjat

NO, Until OIL is gone!

by Maryam Hojjat on

Plus IRI/IRR knows nothing about market economy.  According to KHOMIENI " Economy is for Khars".