Re: wikipedia?
I think Ravi said he'd be willing to host it. I'd be happy to get it (it being MediaWiki at http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net/index.php/MediaWiki_development) set up if Ravi's still willing to host it, and someone is willing to foot the modest bill ($10? 15?) of buying a domain name. Provided that people can agree on one. Jonathan (apologies if this is a repeat. my first attempt timed out) Quoting "Devine, James" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > what ever happened to the idea of producing a wikipedia of leftist political > economy? I proposed it and someone said he'd look into it... and then I heard > nothing. > > Jim Devine > This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.
Re: a chilling report
I found Niall Ferguson's piece in the NY Times equally as chilling. He states that the US should be trying to emulate the role of Britain in 1920: "And this brings us to the second lesson the United States needs to learn from the British experience. Putting this rebellion down will require severity. In 1920, the British eventually ended the rebellion through a combination of aerial bombardment and punitive village-burning expeditions. It was not pretty." from: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/18/opinion/18FERG.html JL Uprisings Force U.S. to Rethink Strategy in Iraq This is the most negative report that I have seen from the corporate press. Everything that could go wrong for the Bushies is going wrong. By Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Karl Vick Washington Post Foreign Service Sunday, April 18, 2004; Page A01 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20690-2004Apr17.html -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail michael at ecst.csuchico.edu This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.
Re: China question
Hi Michael, Land tenure is changing. After the rural reforms in the early 80s when the communes/brigades were disbanded, rural land usufruct rights were given to households while ownership remained in the hands of the state at the local level. Rural land usufruct rights are now increasingly tradeable. The government encourages the development of integrated agricultural companies that either lease the land from villages, or establish contracts with individual farmers to produce. Many of these companies are foreign, I know of some big Hong Kong and Thai players, but I don't keep track of this stuff very much. There's a good recent article about this here: http://www.chinastudygroup.org/index.php?type=news&id=5360 Yes, grain production has been falling in China recently, although everyone claims that there is plenty of reserve grain. Usually urban sprawl and shady land deals are blamed for the reduction in grain production, not shifting production. China lost arable land equal to the area of Maryland to these processes last year according to this interesting article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6653-2004Apr12.html Cheers, Jonathan How is China able to export fruits and nuts? Where do the farmers find the land to grow such crops? Are they cutting back on the production of grains? This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.
Re: leftist encyclopedia
I suppose people could set up a leftist wikipedia under PEN-L auspices, but that kind of defeats the purpose of the existing wikipedia: it's encyclopedic embrace. At the same time, though, I very much agree that we need better ways to communicate and be able to build on our strengths, knowledge and experience. Email lists are great, but the threshold for posting is high, and hence lots of people unfortunately lurk. Im not sure if a wiki is the best way to solve this problem. Another form that might be more useful is the portal. A good example of a portal is http://info.interactivist.net/ Im willing to work with people interested in getting something similar set up, but would also be happy to help with the wiki project. Cheers, Jonathan - This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/
Re: Job flight
Hi Michael, I think the jury's still out on this one. In certain national contexts (usually advanced capitalist ones), the economists are probably not eating crow. (Basso's work shows that working-time is increasing in advanced capitalism) At the global scale, (the only proper level to examine this question IMO), the economists don't even know where to begin carving it up. The ILO says 1/3 of the world's workforce is un- or underemployed (about 1 billion, mainly underemployed). And they claim the situation is getting worse. I think I mentioned before that China experienced full employment by the end of the 1970s. Now, the scale of the 'surplus' population is measured in the hundreds of millions. (and there was *not* much disguised unemployment in China before the reforms) I'm not *blaming* technology for this; 'unemployment' is a social category that presupposes capitalist relations of production, which in the case of China you actually watch being created. The capitalist relations of production is where our critique should be aimed I would think. Policy makers in China have given up trying to create formal employment for the 'surplus population', and are happy to let them fend for themselves in the informal sector. Well, I suppose hawking stuff on the street is still value-creating service employment! (sarcasm) This still seems relevant: "All political economists of any standing admit that the introduction of new machinery has a baneful effect on the workmen in the old handicrafts and manufactures with which this machinery at first competes. Almost all of them bemoan the slavery of the factory operative. And what is the great trump-card that they play? That machinery, after the horrors of the period of introduction and development have subsided, instead of diminishing, in the long run increases the number of the slaves of labour! Yes, Political Economy revels in the hideous theory, hideous to every "philanthropist" who believes in the eternal Nature-ordained necessity for capitalist production, that after a period of growth and transition, even its crowning success, the factory system based on machinery, grinds down more workpeople than on its first introduction it throws on the streets." KM http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch15.htm#S7 Cheers, Jonathan M Perelman wrote: The current explanation that job flight this response to improved technology races to questions for me. Virtually every economics textbook I have seen dismisses the idea that new technology can destroy jobs. The most reputable counterargument came from David Ricardo in the 19th-century. Few economists have done much further. Supposedly, new technology lowers prices, which spurs new demand, which reemploy as the workers. I'm not saying I accept this argument, but I have not seen many economists eating crow. Secondly, I have no idea how you separate new technology from outsourcing. Until very recently, much of the spur to new technology came from the production of informational processing technologies, but much of the manufacturing, which certainly played a role in the reduction of costs, occurred offshore. - This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/
Re: Job flight
joanna bujes wrote: "The truth is they don't have a clue on how to manage intellectual labor. They try to do it as it were an assembly line. Doesn't work. Offsourcing Hi- tech means managing intellectual labor accross great geographical, cultural, and sometimes linguistic divides. Not what I would call a recipie for success." The Talyorists long ago dropped any distinction between types of labor. Intellectual, manual labor, it's all the same thing to them: actions geared toward a result, measured in time and price. Some nuts have been harder to crack than others, but the development and now near universality of computer and communications technology changes everything. The true limit to capital's drive to abstract us is our own resistance, not the 'inefficiencies' that result when they hit up against geographical/cultural/linguistic barriers. (very much agree with Doug's point on this - we have to change the terrain of debate to win the argument) They will likely be able to overcome these limits, that is if we let them. Speaking of water-cooler conversations, on one front, the wonks are hard at work at continuing to annihilate distance. They're slobbering over the possibilities of telepresence via internet2, and I've been noticing a lot of talk about how it allows for 'hallway' or 'watercooler' conversations. And they've also stumbled onto the future workplace of the networked prols: the telecubicle! http://www.advanced.org/tele-immersion/board/cubelabel.html Cheers, Jonathan - This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/
Hobbes and Darwin in China
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/29/weekinreview/29zhao.html China's Wealthy Live by a Creed: Hobbes and Darwin, Meet Marx By YILU ZHAO BEIJING The rich in China these days are moving into the villages of Napa Valley, Palm Springs, Long Beach, Upper East Side and Park Avenue, all in the suburbs of Beijing and Shanghai. When I grew up in Shanghai, places were called New China Road, Workers' New Village and People's Square. Now China's real estate tycoons have chosen American place names, and adorned what they build with Spanish arches, Greek columns and faux Roman sculptures. But the settings themselves are not bucolic. The vast majority of these new single-family homes, which cost $800,000 on average, are huddled together in walled compounds with 24-hour security guards. The few rich who dare to live on their own in the countryside almost always become targets of burglars, who, in desperate moments, are willing to kill. This is the dark side to China's new wealth: Envy, insecurity and social dislocation have come with the huge disparity between how the wealthy live and how the vast numbers of poor do. Clear signs of class division have emerged under a government that long claimed to have eliminated economic classes. China still calls itself socialist, and in an odd sense it is. While the income structure has changed, much that was intended to underpin social order has not. The criminal justice system, for example, has remained draconian. When caught, burglars invariably receive lengthy sentences. But there is no shortage of burglars, and the reason is clear: 18 percent of Chinese live on less than $1 a day, according to the United Nations. The poor are visible on the edges of any metropolis, where slums of plywood apartments sometimes abut the Western- looking mansions. The most recent measure by which social scientists judge the inequality of a country's income distribution indicates that China is more unequal, for example, than the United States, Japan, South Korea and India. In fact, inequality levels approach China's own level in the late 1940's, when the Communists, with the help of the poor, toppled the Nationalist government. In 1980, when the turn toward a market economy started, China had one of the world's most even distributions of wealth. Certainly, China before 1980 was a land of material shortage. When I was a child in the 1970's and 80's, I can recall, every family, equally poor, collected ration coupons to get flour, rice, sugar, meat, eggs, cloth, cookies and cigarettes. Without coupons, money was largely useless. Today, huge Western-style supermarkets offer French wine and New Zealand cheese. But an odd change has come about in some shoppers' minds. As members of China's business and political elite, they have come to believe that the world is a huge jungle of Darwinian competition, where connections and smarts mean everything, and quaint notions of fairness count for little. I noticed this attitude on my most recent trip to China from the United States, where I moved nine years ago. So I asked a relative who lives rather comfortably to explain. "Is it fair that the household maids make 65 cents an hour while the well-connected real estate developers become millionaires or billionaires in just a few years?" I asked. He was caught off guard. After a few seconds of silence, he settled on an answer he had read in a popular magazine. "Look at England, look at America," he said. "The Industrial Revolution was very cruel. When the English capitalists needed land, sheep ate people." (Chinese history books use the phrase "sheep ate people" to describe what happened in the 19th century, when tenant farmers in Britain were thrown off their land to starve so that sheep could graze and produce wool for new mills.) "Since England and America went through that pain, shouldn't we try to avoid the same pain, now that we have history as our guide?" I asked. "If we want to proceed to a full market economy, some people have to make sacrifices," my relative said solemnly. "To get to where we want to get, we must go through the 'sheep eating people' stage too." In other words, while most Chinese have privately dumped the economic prescriptions of Marx, two pillars of the way he saw the world have remained. First is the inexorable procession of history to a goal. The goal used to be the Communist utopia; now the destination is a market economy of material abundance. Second, just as before, the welfare of some people must be sacrificed so the community can march toward its destiny. Many well-to-do Chinese readily endorse those views, so long as neither they nor their relatives are placed on the altar of history. In the end, Marx is used to justify ignoring the pain of the poor. What the well-off have failed to read from history, however, is that extreme inequality tends to breed revolutions. Many of China's dynasties fell in peasant uprisings, and extreme inequality fed the Communist revolutio
Bestseller exposes social powderkeg in rural China
Bestseller exposes social powderkeg in rural China No-holds-barred book blows the lid on shocking injustices against the country's 900 million peasants Straits Times | 21 feb by Chua Chin Hon http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/asia/story/0,4386,236301,00.html BEIJING - Like any hot-blooded youth, peasant Ding Zuoming thought he would prevail because he had the truth on his side. So when corrupt village officials tried to levy illegal and exorbitant taxes and fees on the residents of Luying village in eastern Anhui province, he rallied his fellow peasants and demanded an audit. He paid for that mistake with his life. The village chief ordered his arrest and the local police beat him up so badly that he died in a hospital the following day. The incident happened on Feb 21, 1993. Mr Ding was the first farmer to be beaten to death for protesting against unfair taxes and fees, though he was hardly the last one, according to a new book chronicling the 'unimaginable poverty and hardship' of farmers in Anhui. Nearly 11 years after his death, the account of his fate is sending shock waves through many Chinese cities where the book, An Investigation Of Chinese Farmers, has become an unlikely best-seller. At least 100,000 copies have been sold, and its entire content is available online. While scholarly works on rural issues have been widely available for years, none has had the mass market appeal of the book by Anhui writers Chen Guidi and his wife Wu Chuntao. Their book, at turns emotional, at turns strident, but mostly brimming with anger at the injustice inflicted against the country's 900 million peasants, touched a raw nerve among urban Chinese readers, many of whom are disengaged from the plight of the rural areas and are fed a constant diet of rosy reports from state TV. Aside from corruption and police brutality, the book, the result of an extensive three-year study, also details how already impoverished villages were dragged further into debt by officials trying to score political points with vanity projects. When inspection tours by top leaders from the central government threatened to blow the lid off their puffed-up reports, local officials orchestrated elaborate schemes to fool them. The book described one such scam in May 1998, when then premier Zhu Rongji visited Anhui's Nanling county to check on the government's grain procurement programme. He was shown fully stocked granaries that had taken officials four days and nights to fill with grain from other counties, because no one wanted to tell the tough-talking premier the truth: that the programme had failed and that many of Nanling's granaries sat empty. Observers were surprised that the book named the villages, counties and officials involved, many of whom are still in power. More disturbingly, the authors said in interviews and webchats here that they had pulled their punches, and what they witnessed was much worse in reality. The couple wrote: 'Those who have not left the big cities think the whole of China is like Beijing or Shanghai. 'We want to say that we have seen unimaginable poverty, unimaginable evil, unimaginable suffering and desperation, unimaginable resistance and silence.' The book casts a harsh and timely spotlight on the multitude of problems in China's rural heartland, which experts fear could lead to social unrest as legislators gear up for the annual legislative session next month. A key debate will be on the 150-billion-yuan (S$30.6-billion) budget to raise farmers' incomes and improve the agricultural sector. The authors and several other experts have argued for years that lowering the tax and fee burdens of peasants will not work without corresponding measures to boost their incomes, which are now at least three to four times lower than those of their urban counterparts. Central government efforts to reduce their tax burden have been hobbled by systemic corruption and non-compliance among local officials who exploit loopholes and a lack of supervision to enrich themselves. Authors Chen and Wu wrote: 'What we are facing is not just an agricultural problem... It is simply the biggest social problem facing the new Chinese leadership. 'We should not forget the farmlands just because we now have sparkling new cities. 'If the 900 million peasants in China do not become well-off, all optimistic economic forecasts are irrelevant.' (the book is at http://finance.sina.com.cn/guest147.shtml for you Chinese readers!) - This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/
Foreign firms export most of China's electronic goods
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200402/21/eng20040221_135425.shtml Foreign firms export most of China's electronic goods Foreign-invested enterprises exported 70.7 percent of China's electromechanical products last year, according to a national work conference on export, import of electromechanical products. Most of the top 10 exporters were foreign-invested firms and coastal and eastern areas were home to most of China's big and small electromechanical exporters. Shanghai Municipality and Guangdong and Jiangsu Provinces are home to 457 exporters, or 72 percent of the country's 632 major electromechanical export firms, all boasting yearly exports of over 50 million US dollars. Customs figures show the 632 enterprises exported 143.818 billion US dollars, or 63.2 percent of the country's total export of electromechanical products the previous year, with the leading enterprise exporting 6.241 billion US dollars. - This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/
new frontiers of property rights theory in China
Shareholding System Becomes 'Major Trend' of China's Economic Development Hong Kong Hsin Pao (Hong Kong Economic Journal) in Chinese 21 Nov 03 p 15 HSIN PAO (HONG KONG ECONOMIC JOURNAL) In the article, entitled: "New Theoretical Breakthrough of Third Plenary Session" carried in this column on 31 October, I had pointed out that the Third Plenary Session of the 16th CPC Central Committee had done away with the traditional view that state-owned and collective economies be taken as the main means of realizing public ownership. It called for efforts to develop a mixed ownership with the public capital as a shareholder and ensure that the joint- stock system be taken as the main means of realizing public ownership. It also permits the non-public capital to enter infrastructure, public utilities and other sectors not prohibited by laws and regulations. Theoreticians and economists in Beijing believed that this new theoretical breakthrough would greatly help the development of the private sector and other non-public sectors of the economy and the amalgamation of the public and non- public sectors of the economy. The state-owned enterprises would carry out restructuring on a large scale to become shareholding ones so as to vigorously develop the mixed ownership system, let the non-public sectors of the economy transform the public sectors of the economy, and bring about the sustainable sound development of the entire economy. Now, we will further elucidate this situation on the basis of our latest information. Theoretical Breakthrough on Ownership System Not Easy to Come By A well-informed person in Beijing said that this new theoretical breakthrough and formulation of making the joint-stock system the principal means of realizing public ownership is an inexorable development since China started to develop its reform and opening-up program and the reform of its economic system. This is also an inevitable development to undauntedly explore the various means of realizing public ownership on the basis of Deng Xiaoping's requirements. Deng Xiaoping had called for efforts to explore new means in realizing public ownership, and stressed the need to do away with conventional ideas, when he talked ab out the reform of state-owned enterprises in the early days of reform and opening-up. With the continuous deepening of China's reform, the Chinese Communists have understood more about the various effective means of realizing public ownership. The Third Plenary Session of the 14th CPC Central Committee pointed out that with the flow and reorganization of property rights, more and more economic units with mixed ownership had cropped up. They might form a new structure of property ownership. The report of the 15th CPC National Congress said that public ownership can and should take multiple forms in its realization. All governance methods and organizational forms that reflect the laws relating to socialized production may be utilized boldly. The joint stock system is a form of capital organization of modern enterprises. It can be used both under capitalism and under socialism. The Fourth Plenary Session of the 15th CPC Central Committee pointed out that large and medium-sized state-owned enterprises, especially those with good performance, may transform to joint-stock system by getting listed if suitable, and in doing so they may develop mixed ownership through cooperation and equity participation by different enterprises. The report of the 16th CPC National Congress pointed out that enterprises should develop mixed ownership, with the only exception of those in which the state holds sole proprietorship. The "decision" adopted by the Third Plenary Session of the 16th CPC Central Committee further put forward: "It is necessary to keep pace with the trend of the continuous development of economic marketization, further vitalize the public sector of the economy, and vigorously develop an economic system supported by a form of mixed ownership with equity participation of the public capital, collective capital, and non-public capital. Efforts must be made to absorb investment from diversified channels and make the joint stock system the principal means of realizing public ownership." From this perspective, we belie ve that the Chinese Communists' "high opinion" about the joint stock system is a continuation and development of its formulations on this subject in the past. It is also an important achievement in exploring an effective means to amalgamate public ownership with the market economy. A theoretician in Beijing pointed out that the joint stock system is the product of the development of socialized production and market economy to a certain stage. It is also an effective form of capital organization and business operation used by enterprises to sharpen their market competitiveness. It will remain active in each passing day in China's economic activities and play a significant role in accelerating economic development.
Chinese workers strike in Hubei
http://www.china-labour.org.hk/iso/article.adp?article_id=5235 Over 20 workers detained in bloody clash after massive protests continue in Tieshu Textile Group Factory China Labour Bulletin has learned that since 8 February 2004, an estimated 2,000 workers and retired workers from the Tieshu Textile Factory in Suizhou, Hubei Province have been staging further public protests in their ongoing struggle to recover unpaid benefits and against corruption at the factory. CLB has been monitoring and reporting on the case since the end of 2002, when the factory announced its bankruptcy. According to eyewitnesses interviewed by CLB, on 8 February some 1,200 workers blocked the local railway for most of the morning. They were then joined by several hundred more workers. Later that morning, some 800 armed police and regular police from neighboring towns arrived to disperse the protestors and block the arrival of hundreds more who were heading toward the scene. In the violent confrontation that followed, according to eyewitnesses, scores of demonstrators were injured; the police are claiming that over ten police officers and no workers were injured. A staff person at the local hospital has confirmed to CLB that at least one worker and two police officers were admitted with head injuries, including a 65 year-old woman. CLB managed to speak to the daughter of the elderly woman, Wang Xuping, who stated that police had hit her mother over the head from behind with a police baton. According to the interview, the police were randomly hitting the demonstrators regardless of whether or not they were actively resisting the polices attempts to disperse them. As workers left the scene of the confrontation, several among the last of them to leave were apprehended by the police. Further detentions of workers took place that afternoon and during 9, 10 and 11 February. . According to workers interviewed by CLB, the police were rounding up workers arbitrarily from the local streets and markets, and among those taken away were people who had not even been present at the demonstration. We were also informed that several officers of the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) who had been present at the confrontation and had verbally reprimanded the police for their brutal treatment of the demonstrators. One PLA officer reportedly has since been taken into police custody on charges of inciting workers to cause trouble. Reports vary as to where the detained workers are being held. Some workers interviewed believed that they were being held in a local hotel for special re- education sessions organized by the local ACFTU, the Womens Federation and the police. Another interview stated that over 20 detainees were being held at the Suizhou No.2 Detention Centre. However, when contacted by CLB, officials from both the ACFTU and the detention centre denied any knowledge of the detainees. Since the initial blocking of the railway line on 8 February and the bloody confrontation with police that followed, some 1,000 workers have continued to gather each day outside the gates of the Suizhou Municipal Government buildings. On 11 February, when the workers attempted to enter the Town Hall to seek dialogue with the local government, another worker leading the demonstration was apprehended. As of 11 February, several hundred protestors were said to be maintaining their vigil outside government buildings. Causes of conflict The 8 February demonstrations were sparked by the Tieshu workers receipt the previous day of an official notification, issued jointly by the factorys Bankruptcy Audit Committee and its Communist Party branch, which reversed a series of earlier pledges that had been made to the workers. According to the notification, only a small proportion of the funds invested by the workers themselves in the factory in 1993 and 1997 would be returned to them. Many of the current workers and those recently retired (from about 1999 onwards) had been encouraged to buy shares in the factory in order to support it financially. It later emerged that the factory director had issued warnings, as early as 1999, to a number of private shareholders and personal friends that the shares were going to fall in value as the factory moved towards bankruptcy. The workers however did not know of the warnings until it was too late and bankruptcy was declared, and in the recent official notification they learned that their 1993 shares were now worth only one fourth of their original value. Second, the Bankruptcy Audit Committee informed the Tieshu workers that two formerly distinct categories of laid-off workers would henceforth be merged and that all existing benefits for both groups were to be withdrawn. Previously, the company had some 3,500 workers who were still classified as employed (despite not actively working) who were supposed to receive some 130 Yuan each month as a living subsidy, while some 835 internally-retired workers received benefits of
China bubble mitosis - was: is AG blowing a China bubble
Thanks for posting the Bloomberg artice, Ian. What a huge story it is. Beijing rolls out red carpet for the stars Capital offers incentives to lure talent to the city SCMP | 12 feb by Alice Yan and Alex Lo Eager to compete with glamorous cousin Shanghai, Beijing is rolling out the red carpet for foreign celebrities with the promise of streamlined visa access and incentives to buy big-ticket items such as property and cars. The capital has long been where the mainland's famous people make their names, but Shanghai has become the destination of choice for entertainers from Taiwan, Hong Kong and elsewhere. >From next month, the capital will fast-track the granting of residential status, financial assistance - where appropriate - and tax breaks on big purchases such as homes or cars. "Shanghai is the city where many stars like to live and spend their money. The policy will give Beijing more charm for stars," said Dong Meiqi, editor of the monthly magazine Star Times. The initiative targets talent from abroad, as well as from Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. Foreigners engaged in Beijing's cultural and sports sectors will be able to come and go as they please on five-year multiple-entry visas, said Huang Qiang, vice-director of the city's Personnel Bureau. Currently, they are required to renew their visas annually. Yang Heqing, a professor at the Capital University of Economics and Business, said: "Beijing is ambitious to become one of the world's cultural hot spots. A flood of overseas visitors will come for the Olympic Games in 2008 eager to see cultural things, not skyscrapers." Andrew Lau Wai-keung, director of the blockbuster Hong Kong film trilogy Infernal Affairs, said he would love to live in Beijing - or at least own a house there. "It's a great city; a national city. Hong Kong is a very small city. Beijing represents a whole culture. - This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/
Japanese Business Ties With China Explode
http://www.ctnow.com/business/nationworld/ats- ap_business15feb08,1,4715544.story?coll=sns-business-headlines AP | 8 feb by Joseph Coleman KIMITSU, Japan -- One after another, red-hot slabs of metal emerge from the blazing maws of the furnaces at Nippon Steel and are squeezed and stretched into long, thin sheets -- perfect for car bodies or cell phones. Their final destination? Increasingly, the answer is China. Nippon Steel Corp. is one of many Japanese companies profiting from what's called "the China Boom." China has an exploding hunger for steel and construction materials, cell phones, plasma TVs and autos, and the Japanese are working overtime to fill it. "China swallows everything," said Takashi Kanke, a Nippon Steel official who recently escorted two visitors around the sprawling works at Kimitsu, across the bay from Tokyo. The mills are churning out steel at nearly full capacity thanks to demand in China. Driven by industrial output, export demand and investment, China's economy grew a frenetic 9.1 percent in 2003, the highest rate since 1997. Japanese exporters responded, boosting shipments to China by 33.2 percent to a record $62.9 billion. Exports to China have more than doubled since 2000, though they still are only about half of exports to the United States. The emergence of the Chinese market as an engine for growth in Asia is also speeding Japan's shift of production to China. Nippon Steel agreed to a joint venture with China's top steel producer in December, Japanese brewers like Asahi are muscling into the world's biggest beer market, and electronics maker Matsushita, whose China sales have more than tripled since 1998, recently made the country the core of its global strategy. The Japanese -- along with American and European companies also making money in China -- are betting the trend will continue, boosted in part by construction and other opportunities generated by the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the 2010 Shanghai World Expo. Estimates say Chinese growth will slow somewhat in 2004 -- to 8 percent or more. The China boom is so strong it is playing a key role in fueling Japan's recovery, a rebound many hope will finally lift the world's second largest economy out of the humiliating slump where it has languished since the early 1990s. Jesper Koll, chief economist for Merrill Lynch Japan, said the short-lived growth surges in Japan over the past decade have often been narrow, based on automotive sales in the United States, for example. "Now it's a very broad-based recovery in Japan," he said. "It's all China." The rapid deepening of business ties between Asia's largest economy and its most populous nation, however profitable, does make the Japanese a little nervous. Everyone from steel executives to the Bank of Japan is warning of potentially destabilizing inflation brought on by an overheated Chinese economy. Even those at the forefront of Japan's push into its neighbor's economy say social or political turmoil could suddenly turn the Chinese boom into a bust. Some also worry that Japan is feeding the behemoth that will one day overtake it economically and politically. Already, an increasingly confident China is chipping away at Japan's influence in the rest of Asia, and Tokyo has watched uneasily as Beijing's relations have warmed with Washington. Political ties between Japan and China are troubled. Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's repeated visits to a shrine honoring war dead -- including the architects of Tokyo's invasion of China in the 1930s -- have drawn protests from Beijing. The Chinese also suspect they are the target of closer military cooperation between Tokyo and Washington. "Political relations are the biggest risk," conceded Shinji Shimahara, general secretary of the Japan-China Investment Promotion Organization. "Some people have fear, some don't -- I don't know which side is right." But Shimahara and many others involved in business with China have come to the same conclusion: Japan has no choice but to sell to China. "Before the China risk, there is the China opportunity," said Yuki Iriyama, general manager of Nippon Steel's overseas business division. "Almost all of Japanese industry is looking at China as a prospective big market." The steel industry illustrates both the opportunities and the risks of that market. Chinese demand has helped boost Japanese production over the doldrums it hit in the mid-1990s, and was largely credited with the 2.6 percent increase in Japanese steel output in 2003. Even more important, the Chinese appetite for steel has triggered a global recovery of steel prices, allowing companies like Nippon Steel to make a bundle. For the six months ending Sept. 30, the company reported a group net profit of $348.5 million, a comeback from the $48.1 million loss suffered in the same period in 2002. Company officials say direct shipments to China account for about 20 percent of its total exports, up to about 2 million tons a
Made in China -- With Neighbors' Imports
Made in China -- With Neighbors' Imports ¡ªRegion Growing Dependent on Giant Market Washington Post | 5 feb by Peter S. Goodman http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14093-2004Feb4.html TANGKAK, Malaysia -- With a decisive yank of his long-handled scythe, the worker sliced away a palm frond, then pulled magenta-ripe bunches of fruit down to the soil. The harvest of the Sagil Estates palm oil plantation began its journey to the ports of China, a route that traces a reordering of the global economy. Workers swept the chestnutlike fruit into woven baskets and dumped it into a cart pulled by a water buffalo. The cart carried the fruit to a truck that hauled it to a nearby mill, where steaming cookers extracted its juices. The resulting oil would be pumped aboard tankers and shipped to points worldwide -- more than one-fifth of it to China. There, it would grease the cooking pots of the world's most populous country, fill the fryers of instant-noodle factories and yield cosmetics and soap. As China's economy rapidly adds mass, it strengthens its pull on the rest of Asia. Rubber plantations in southern Thailand are filling demand for tires as China's auto industry accelerates by 75 percent a year. Rice farmers in northern Thailand now ship half of their premium jasmine rice exports to China and Hong Kong. Steelmakers in Japan and Korea, supplying the spines of the skyscrapers filling China's cities, now call China their largest customer. Computer chip plants in Taiwan, Korea and Malaysia press to satisfy the demand from the factories of coastal China, which now assemble vast quantities of electronics. And as China seeks to diversify its sources of energy while struggling to meet demand for power, it is tapping oil and gas fields in Indonesia and Australia. In the United States, Europe and Japan, fretful attention has been trained on the $438 billion worth of goods that China exported last year, provoking talk that its rise as a trade power is decimating manufacturing communities in the rest of the world. But here in Southeast Asia, the focus has largely shifted to the counterpart number -- the $413 billion worth of goods China imported last year, with the region's economies capturing a disproportionate share of the spoils. Last year, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and the Philippines all saw exports to China swell by more than 50 percent, helping to change perceptions of China from potential threat into a land of opportunity. But the shipments also create some new concerns: Southeast Asia's dependence means that its own growth could be vulnerable if China's economy cools. And as Chinese manufacturing grows in sophistication, it likely will eat into the flow of finished products those countries send directly to the United States, Europe and Japan. For now, the biggest problem is simply keeping up with demand as China's relentless industrial expansion absorbs larger quantities of material. During the first nine months of 2003, China bought more than $15 billion worth of machinery and transportation equipment from Southeast Asia, according to Goldman Sachs, a leap of more than 70 percent from the same period a year earlier. Over the same period, China's imports of minerals, oils, chemicals, plastics and rubber from Southeast Asia jumped by half, to $6.4 billion. "For 2003, China was our biggest buyer," said Yong Chin Fatt, general manager of the commodities section at IOI Group, the Malaysian conglomerate that owns Sagil Estates along with more than 60 other palm oil plantations. Malaysia's shipments of palm oil to China have nearly doubled over the past two years as has the price for its crop. IOI is now planting new acreage in anticipation of greater demand. "We don't see China as a threat," Yong said. "We see China as a savior." Sarasin Viraphol, executive vice president at the Charoen Pokphand Group Co. Ltd., a Thailand-based poultry conglomerate that was the first official foreign investor in the People's Republic of China, once worried that Southeast Asia could be wiped out by a flood of low-cost goods from the Middle Kingdom. Now, he sees it differently. "If you make Chinese people richer, they are going to want all those things people want," he said. "Can you imagine 1.3 billion people eating the way Americans eat? There might not be enough chicken in all the world." In recent months, China's leaders have signaled that they fear the economy could be overheating, tightening credit flowing to the country's fastest- growing sectors such as autos and real estate. They are cognizant that too much investment can spawn a disastrous bubble, a supply glut that eventually sends prices down. If such an unraveling were to occur in real estate, it could force China's banks, already stocked with some $500 billion in bad loans, to write off tens of billions more. Most economists now expect China to slow somewhat this year from a torrid pace that has seen growth in excess of 9 percent a year for the pas
China: Fears of social unrest as rural land grab worsens
Fears of social unrest as rural land grab worsens 40 million farmers have lost out in the name of progress SCMP | 5 feb by Nailene Chou Wiest http://www.chinastudygroup.org/index.php?type=news&id=4619 Each year two million mainland farmers lose their land and drift into the cities, only to be unable to secure a job or an education for their children. About 40 million farmers have been driven from the land nationwide and discontent over corruption and the low compensation they have been paid could seriously affect social stability unless their rights are better protected. This warning, published in the official People's Daily on Monday, was the latest call for the government to address land abuse, which is likely to be the hot issue at the annual conference of the National People's Congress next month. The problem has become acute since the campaign to develop the west accelerated the seizure of land from farmers for roads, dams, utilities and industrial parks. Half of the land appropriated by local governments had been resold to commercial developers, the report said. The farmers in those areas were paid a maximum of 18,000 yuan - enough to live for seven years in the countryside or two years in towns. Various taxes and levies are often deducted from the compensation or the payments are delayed for years, forcing thousands of landless farmers to join the swelling ranks of disgruntled people who have petitioned Beijing in the past two years. Under the constitution, all land belongs to the state or collectives. Only governments can acquire land and seizures are often carried out in the name of economic development or job creation. But in reselling the land at higher prices to developers, local governments often pocket most of the profits. The People's Daily article called for measures to increase the amount of compensation and allow farmers to share any profits from resales. It also urged local governments to take more responsibility for creating jobs and providing housing for dispossessed farmers. A resolution at the third plenum of the 16th Communist Party Congress last October stated that the wanton appropriation of farmland must be curbed to protect the rights of farmers and the security of the nation's grain production. Minister of Land and Resources Sun Wensheng announced in December that the government would put land officials below provincial level under the ministry's control, therefore depriving local governments of the right to control land use. Mr Sun said that close to half of the nation's 6,015 economic development zones had either been abolished or merged, and about 168,000 land fraud cases were investigated. At a recent meeting on fighting corruption, state investigators said that this year they would focus more on social injustices such as abuses by officials in land acquisitions. - This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/
U.S., China Are on Collision Course Over Oil
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-luft2feb02,1,370578.story? coll=la-news-comment-opinions LA Times | 2 feb Gal Luft Sixty-seven years ago, oil-starved Japan embarked on an aggressive expansionary policy designed to secure its growing energy needs, which eventually led the nation into a world war. Today, another Asian power thirsts for oil: China. While the U.S. is absorbed in fighting the war on terror, the seeds of what could be the next world war are quietly germinating. With 1.3 billion people and an economy growing at a phenomenal 8% to 10% a year, China, already a net oil importer, is growing increasingly dependent on imported oil. Last year, its auto sales grew 70% and its oil imports were up 30% from the previous year, making it the world's No. 2 petroleum user after the U.S. By 2030, China is expected to have more cars than the U.S. and import as much oil as the U.S. does today. Dependence on oil means dependence on the Middle East, home to 70% of the world's proven reserves. With 60% of its oil imports coming from the Middle East, China can no longer afford to sit on the sidelines of the tumultuous region. Its way of forming a footprint in the Middle East has been through providing technology and components for weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems to unsavory regimes in places such as Iran, Iraq and Syria. A report by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a group created by Congress to monitor U.S.-China relations, warned in 2002 that "this arms trafficking to these regimes presents an increasing threat to U.S. security interests in the Middle East." The report concludes: "A key driver in China's relations with terrorist-sponsoring governments is its dependence on foreign oil to fuel its economic development. This dependency is expected to increase over the coming decade." Optimists claim that the world oil market will be able to accommodate China and that, instead of conflict, China's thirst could create mutual desire for stability in the Middle East and thus actually bring Beijing closer to the U.S. History shows the opposite: Superpowers find it difficult to coexist while competing over scarce resources. The main bone of contention probably will revolve around China's relations with Saudi Arabia, home to a quarter of the world's oil. The Chinese have already supplied the Saudis with intermediate- range ballistic missiles, and they played a major role 20 years ago in a Saudi- financed Pakistani nuclear effort that may one day leave a nuclear weapon in the hands of a Taliban-type regime in Riyadh or Islamabad. Since 9/11, a deep tension in U.S.-Saudi relations has provided the Chinese with an opportunity to win the heart of the House of Saud. The Saudis hear the voices in the U.S. denouncing Saudi Arabia as a "kernel of evil" and proposing that the U.S. seize and occupy the kingdom's oil fields. The Saudis especially fear that if their citizens again perpetrate a terror attack in the U.S., there would be no alternative for the U.S. but to terminate its long-standing commitment to the monarchy - and perhaps even use military force against it. The Saudis realize that to forestall such a scenario they can no longer rely solely on the U.S. to defend the regime and must diversify their security portfolio. In their search for a new patron, they might find China the most fitting and willing candidate. The risk of Beijing's emerging as a competitor for influence in the Middle East and a Saudi shift of allegiance are things Washington should consider as it defines its objectives and priorities in the 21st century. Without a comprehensive strategy designed to prevent China from becoming an oil consumer on a par with the U.S., a superpower collision is in the cards. The good news is that we are still in a position to halt China's slide into total dependency. Unlike the U.S., China's energy infrastructure is largely underdeveloped and primarily coal-based. It has not yet invested in a multibillion-dollar oil infrastructure. China is therefore in a better position than the U.S. to bypass oil in favor of next-generation fuels. The U.S. should embark on a frank dialogue with China, conveying to the Chinese the mutual benefits of circumventing oil and offering any assistance required to curb China's growing appetite for it. A shift from oil into other sources of transportation energy - such as bio-fuels or coal-based fuels, hydrogen and natural gas - could prevent future conflict and foster unprecedented Sino- American cooperation with significant economic benefits for both countries. The Chinese would probably leapfrog oil if they could. Dependency of any kind is foreign to their culture. But without substantial American technological support, China is likely to follow the path of least resistance and become a full-fledged oil economy. Failure to address the issue with the utmost care would undercut all of today's costly efforts by the U.S. to r
China: Amnesty called on corporate crimes
Amnesty called on corporate crimes In a promising sign for the wider private economy, firms in Hebei province will be 'forgiven' for financial misconduct SCMP | 2 feb by Wang Xiangwei In what could turn out to be a watershed in the mainland's stop-go efforts to liberate the private economy, Hebei province is "forgiving" private businessmen for the economic crimes they committed as they worked to get their companies off the ground. Hebei, a mainly agricultural province, has drafted regulations stipulating it will no longer take legal proceedings against bosses of private firms for economic crimes and irregularities they committed in the initial development of their businesses, generally known as "original sin". Sheng Hong, the director of the Unirule Institute of Economics in Beijing, thinks the rule is reasonable. "Laws have changed from what they were two decades ago, when the reform and opening-up policy was adopted," he said. "Many things which were regarded as illegal are now legal and those who were law-breakers then should not face punishment now." As other provinces are expected to follow suit, the move could mark the beginning of a new development phase for the mainland's private sector. This should also be good news for Hong Kong. More mainland private businesses would be willing to seek public share offerings and raise money in capital markets without fear that raising profiles would attract the attention of official investigators and land their bosses in trouble, or even jail. The mainland's private businesses started to emerge in the early 1980s and flourished in the 1990s, but the official view has largely remained ambivalent. While private businesses play an increasingly important role in creating jobs and driving the economy forward, they have long played second fiddle to the state sector, with little access to bank loans and policy support. As a result, on their growth paths, most private businesses have a dubious past of dodging taxes, bribery to obtain bank loans or land deals and engaging in other economic irregularities. After more than 20 years of development, private businesses have become the backbone of the economy in many provinces, particularly in coastal regions such as Zhejiang and Guangdong. However, they have also been the targets of investigations for irregularities committed a long time ago. This has prompted some private businessmen to move their hard-earned profits overseas instead of investing them in long-term developments on the mainland. According to the Hebei document - released early last month but only reported by the China Youth Daily on Saturday - the authorities would not prosecute bosses of private firms if crimes committed in the initial stages of development had outlived their validity period stipulated in the mainland's criminal code. Even during the validity period, the provincial authorities would consider lenient or suspended sentences, depending upon the nature and scale of the crimes, their consequences and the repentance of offenders. Gu Yongzhong, a legal professor at China University of Political Science and Law and a director of the China Procedural Law Research Institute, says that according to Chinese criminal law "authorities cannot prosecute anyone if their crime has outlived the validity period". According to the law, the validity period for crimes carrying a maximum penalty of no more than five years' imprisonment are five years, and 15 years for crimes carrying the maximum penalty of 10 years or more But Professor Gu said things were often different in practice. "There are cases when private firm bosses have been prosecuted even when the case is outside the validity period. There's no point backdating crimes to when the legal and economic environments were far from sound," Professor Gu said. "Many private companies have grown large, hired many employees and contributed greatly to the country. Stiff punishments do China no good." Sun Dawu, a well-known Hebei private entrepreneur convicted of illegally taking deposits, said he found the report confusing. "I read the report twice and I still don't understand what it means. What is 'original' sin? Is it applicable to my case? I don't think it means much to me now anyway because I had been convicted," he said when asked to comment on the new rules. Zhang Xingshui, a lawyer who defended Mr Sun, called the new rules a friendly gesture by the Hebei authorities although their exact application might be vague. "It is a good gesture. It signals that there is a change in the attitude of Hebei officials to private enterprises and it is a positive change," he said. - This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/
Re: China's new Marxist left
Louis, I believe it's the situation that's ironic. michael's assessment is right on the mark. Jonathan Michael Lebowitz wrote: I was struck by the vigour with which the assembled Chinese Marxist economists were discussing the law of value--- in particular, how to demonstrate that utility yields value and the capitalist is a productive worker. This is ironical, right? Louis Proyect - This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/
Re: re China's new Marxist left
Sorry, forgot to give the place! The bookstore/salon is in Beijing. jl - This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/
Re: re China's new Marxist left
Michael, The academic left is much more marginal in China than in the US, and even more removed from the experiences of the producers than here. Zuo Dapei, wrote a short piece on heterodox economics in China. It gives a sense of what's 'left' in economics (which is, as in the US, *the* hegemonic academic discipline of social science): http://www.chinastudygroup.org/index.php?type=article&id=31 On the hopeful side, a group of leftist academics recent teamed up to set up a book store and meeting place for lectures and movies, called Utopia. If people are passing through, it's the place to go. Their website is at: http://www.wyzxwyzx.com/ (but it's all in Chinese) Cheers, Jonathan - This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/
pan-ops in China
http://www.chinastudygroup.org/index.php?type=news&id=4494 (still peanuts compared to the 200,000 pan-ops working just in Securitas (which ate up Pinkerton and Burns in 1999-2000) (also - note Shenyang is the Flint Michigan of China, see: http://www.chinastudygroup.org/index.php?type=article&id=45 for more) In China, private eyes spy from legal twilight zones Knight Ridder | 23 jan by Tim Johnson SHENYANG, China - Out of China's chaotic race to capitalism, an army of private detectives has emerged to find abundant work tracing bogus goods, tailing swindlers and capturing philandering spouses on videotape. By some estimates, 700 to 1,000 small investigations companies now ply their trade, employing tens of thousands of paid informants, stalkers, disguise artists, cameramen and part-time snoops. Like much business in China, the industry exists in a legal twilight zone. Banned by the central government in 1993, private detective agencies became semi-legal again after a 2002 court ruling. Even so, there's no central registry, no federal licensing and only fuzzy legal interpretation about how gumshoes may operate. "My understanding is that anything that is not specifically banned is legal," said Kang Yongchun, the deputy director of the Kedun Detective Office (www.kedun-detective.com) in Shenyang, an industrial city about 400 miles northeast of Beijing. Detective agencies in China do little advertising, preferring to maintain a low profile. But they were thrust into the spotlight after the brutal beating death of a detective Dec. 13 in Beijing. A disgruntled vendor had hired the 39-year-old detective, Huang Lirong, to snoop on the owner of an herbal medicine shop. Huang's body was dumped in front of Beijing Hospital hours after the medicine shop owner spotted him and confronted him, the China Daily newspaper reported. Looking philosophical, and exuding the confidence of a lengthy career in law enforcement, Meng Guanggang, the owner of the Kedun Detective Office, said: "Private detectives are people who walk on the edge. You try to accomplish your goal by all means. If you think it's right, and within the law, then go ahead and do it." In China's rough-and-tumble environment, business owners often view signed contracts as less than ironclad agreements. Swindles are common. Debts mount. Police rarely delve into such disputes. "If you've been cheated by a swindler, you can report the case to the police. But you have to produce evidence. You have to tell the police where the guy is, where the company is," Meng said. While Meng is low-key, other detectives take their cues from popular fiction and B-list movies, employing a practiced bluster to sell their skills. "I'm a rare talent. They can't find a talent like me," Wei Wujun, perhaps China's most widely publicized private detective, announced to a reporter. Like many detectives, Wei, who operates from Shanghai and the southwestern city of Chengdu, spends a lot of time, video camera in hand, tailing men who cheat on their wives. "We stay in the next room and record everything," Wei said as he slapped a videocassette in a VCR to show some footage. "See? The lens is not directed at the bed. We just want to prove that they did that. We try to protect their dignity and privacy." Under new Chinese law, wronged wives may receive assets from their unfaithful husbands if they prove infidelity. Courts now accept videotaped evidence as such proof. Laws prohibit private investigators from carrying guns or recovering private debts, but Wei, like others, finds ways to help clients, even mounting "sting" operations. Wei said a software company summoned him when it discovered an employee pilfering software source code and selling it on the sly. "We set up a trap. I went in with a guy who is a close friend of that staff member, and acted as a potential buyer," Wei said, asserting that he solved the case. When some 150 private detectives, lawyers and other experts gathered in late December in Hangzhou to discuss the outlook for private investigations, much of the talk centered on "competitive intelligence," such as tracing counterfeit goods and identifying thefts of industrial know-how. "In China, they are able to manufacture everything from pins to airplanes. They can counterfeit anything," said Ponnosamy Kalastree, the regional executive director for the Council of International Investigators, an industry group based in Seattle. So the market is booming for investigators to check into purloined manufacturing technology. They also profile potential business partners for clients, probe shipping fraud and track down "vanished" business partners. "China is a big country. It is a heaven for people to disappear," said Kalastree, who heads a security firm in Singapore. "Their technology is still not very advanced for tracing missing persons." U.S. and European security consulting companies are present in China but they largely stick to insurance fraud and safeg
Defeating Homeland Security
That would be fun, but I think those currently in the panoptic driving seat would just re-tool their biometric algorithms to find better Principal Components, and perhaps give us more color-codings! This is a machine that knows no essentialisms. Cheers, Jonathan Actually, wecould defeat this Homeland Security stuff without firing a shot. If a sizeable proportion of people would change their name to something Middle Eastern... I call this the "I am Spartacus" strategy...for those who have seen the movie. Joanna - This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/
Mirowski quote
The allocation of the epithet rational on the part of neoclassical economists has been a defalcation on a grand scale: as we have argued, they have altogether overlooked the prevalence of price as ratio as one of the prime bits of evidence that market operations have been restricted to limited subset of mathematics eminently computable mathematics so that humans can feel free to impose any interpretation or construction they wish on economic events. (565) Machine Dreams: Economics Becomes a Cyborg Science, 2002 - This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/
Re: Interesting Wall Street Journal stories
Sabri asked, "By the way, I guess, we are dealing with a neither observable nor verifiable claim, which is the most difficult problem in contract theory. Does anyone know how to deal with unobservable, unverifiable claims, by the way?" 1) repeat said claim until others are convinced and it becomes a constituent part of their being, and let them (and yourself) bring the claim to its realization 2) if that doesn't work, you can make a state, turn the claim into a self- evident truth, and let the cops handle it Cheers, Jonathan - This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/
Bubblewatch: Ten Hidden Dangers Affecting China's Economic Operations
Liaowang Airs 'Hidden Dangers' in PRC Economy Beijing Liaowang in Chinese 24 Nov 03 No 47, pp 6-8 LIAOWANG Monday, November 24, 2003 Journal Code: 306 Language: ENGLISH Record Type: FULLTEXT Document Type: Daily Report; News Word Count: 2,702 Article by Li Xinxin: "Ten Hidden Dangers Affecting China's Economic Operations" (FBIS Translated Text) A momentum of rapid growth has now emerged in China's economy. GDP increased by 8.5 percent in the first three quarters of this year (2003), setting a new record in recent years. However, whether or not the rapid growth of the economy is at one with its structure, quality, and economic returns, and whether or not it has embarked on the track of switching from an extensive to an intensive economic growth mode are questions that should be seriously pondered at present. Looking at the present situation, the quality of China's economic operations is affected by the following conspicuous problems. 1. Investment growth in some sectors is excessively high, and low-quality duplicate construction has intensified. This year phenomena of excessive investment ad rapid expansion have emerged in the metallurgical, nonferrous metals, chemical industry, machinery industry, textiles, building materials, automobiles, and real estate sectors. In the first three quarters of the year investment in state-owned and other forms of industry was 903.2 billion yuan, up by 49 percent -- a growth rate rise of 24 percentage points -- over the corresponding period of 2002. Investment in the metallurgical industry, nonferrous metals, chemical industry, machinery industry, and textiles respectively increased by 119.3, 68.9, 70.6, 67.2, and 86.7 percent over the corresponding period of 2002. At the same time, real estate investment reached 649.5 billion yuan, a rise of 32.8 percent; the rate of increased investment exceeded 40 percent in 17 of the 31 regions. Looking at the statistics for urban projects costing over 5 million yuan from January to August, there were 2,597 iron and steel projects under construction, a rise of 70.2 percent, with investment up by 140 percent; there were 2,018 textile projects under construction, a rise of 100 percent, with investment up by 140 percent; there were 868 cement projects under construction, a rise of 46.1 percent, with investment up by 130 percent; there were 241 aluminum selection and smelting projects under construction, a rise of 37.7 percent, with investment up by 150 percent; and there were 1,122 automobile projects under construction, a rise of 75 percent, with investment up by 84.1 percent. Most of these projects have low added value and profit rate, and if they are expanded in blind fashion, they will cause an outbreak of low-quality duplicate construction. As a result of the rapid expansion of investment in these traditional industries, the growth of cement and some other building materials has accelerated, in some cases exceeding the growth rate of industry and GDP. In the first three quarters of the year, raw materials such as steel, rolled steel, 10 kinds of nonferrous metals, cement, plate glass, sulphuric acid, caustic soda, and chemical fibers respectively increased by 21.6, 19.4, 19, 16.3, 10.2, 12.6, 14.9., and 17.1 percent over the corresponding period of 2002. The increase in 10 kinds of nonferrous metals and cement respectively speeded up by 5.8 and 3.3 percentage points compared with the corresponding period of 2002. 2. The imbalance in economic structure is becoming more prominent by the day. First, the imbalance in industrial structure has intensified. In the first three quarters of the year primary, secondary, and tertiary industry respectively increased by 2.8, 11.8, and 5.4 percent; the gaps between primary and tertiary industry on the one hand and secondary industry on the other respectively increased by 2 and 3 percentage points compared with the corresponding period of 2002; and the problem of tertiary industry development lagging behind remains conspicuous. Second, regional structural investment remains unbalanced. Investment in the western regions lags behind that in the eastern and central regions. Investment in state-owned and other economic sectors in the eastern regions in the first three quarters was 1.5828 trillion yuan, up by 38 percent compared with the corresponding period of 2002; in the central regions it was 616.3 billion yuan, up by 39.7 percent; and in the western regions it was 452 billion, up by 34.3 percent. The rate of growth of investment in the western regions respectively lagged by 3.6 and 5.3 percentage points behind that in the eastern and central regions. Third, the lack of coordination between increased consumption and investment growth intensified. The ratio of capital formation to final consumption in the first three quarters of the year was 0.68:1, compared with 0.58:1 in the corresponding period of 2002; the ratio of fixed capital formation to people's consumption rose from 0.74:1 in the c
