Wednesday 18 January 2017

Why is China in favour of globalisation?

The Chinese President, Xi Jinping, spoke in this year's World Economic Forum and supported the idea of globalisation. This is definitely a signal that China is in favour of globalisation, speaking openly in the World Economic Forum could be seen as an action against the currently increasing protectionism. However, meanwhile Wilbur Ross from the president-elect's team criticised China by calling China "the most protectionist" economy in the world. It is very clear that many proposals made by the president-elect are moving towards protectionism.

China has the largest population size in the world; and based on such population size the labour cost is relatively low and recently the technological sector in China has been enjoy a rapid development and a large amount of resources, so China has a very competitiveness when trading with other countries. However, meanwhile many developed countries still have their comparative advantages that their populations are more wealthier than the Chinese population and they have more complete markets, especially financial markets. In addition, many developed countries have many already mature multinational companies which already occupy a large size of the global market. Welcoming globalisation could allow many Chinese companies to occupy more in the global markets as the companies have cost advantages.

However, it is not very fair to say China is fully supporting globalisation, actually no single country is fully supporting perfect globalisation. The globalisation China is supporting is trade globalisation; however, it has been a technology and financial protectionist as these two sectors have been less mature and arguably the Chinese comparative disadvantages. Therefore, from the Chinese case, it is fair to say that countries want to welcome globalisation in their advantageous sectors and become protectionists in their disadvantageous sectors.

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