Experience of China Silence Essay

â€Å"Should the experience of China silence those who think that democracy is good for growth?† A democracy is ‘a system of government by the whole population or all the eligible members of a state, typically through elected representatives.’ In this case it can be said that China does not qualify as a democratic country, however it is the world’s fastest growing economy in the world and has been described as the second industrial revolution. This therefore suggests that the argument for democracy being the only solution to economic growth isn’t correct yet perhaps it was other factors other than political state of China which led to its boom economy. For the purpose of this argument, it can be assumed that China is a planned economy yet in reality, although limited, regional governments have limited democracy e.g. Hong Kong. China is the world’s leading exporter which would indicate to China’s prosperity as it refers to their industrial revolution, this is due to China having an enormous pool of cheap labour, large scopes of land in which manufacturing can be fully accommodated and too, on large scales it also has a long sea border which facilitates exporting. Factors such as these, give testimony to the idea of in fact China having mass economic growth which doesn’t involve political reasoning and economic growth was almost naturally occurring to China. However, it could be argued that it is due to the political system of the country, the government is able to direct people into areas of work where economic growth is most pronounced and therefore, labour is used to maximum efficiency. If economic growth is to continue in the way it has done especially in the last 20 years, it cannot continue to rely solely on trade exports; this is because other countries can’t continue to im port more goods from China as they will eventually be faced with financial struggles. A problem that perhaps needs to be remedied is the domestic demand within China, if the people of China continue to save money on the whole and don’t spend as much typical to a developed country such as Britain, predictably they will stop having economic growth. Another significant drawback is to mention the GDP per capita, this measures the real economic power of the average citizen in China. This is very low in China which indicates a very low standard of living, so to measure the level of economic growth in China is not necessarily the right measure to address the recent economic successes. In recent years, the currency of China has increased but still not to the extent that America believes it should have. An increase of 2.1% does not seem to totally honour or reflect the extent of economic growth China has actually experienced. It is by speculation that perhaps due to financial strategies such as by having low value Renminbi cheaper exports are therefore made possible, America has repeatedly brought this up at the WTO as it leads to unemployment in America. The currency leaves in China leaves other countries with the cheaper option to import goods rather than manufacture them their selves and so is in a sense very tactical government control, potentially. It is only in a planned economy such as China’s is that such control over currency would be made possible to allow efficient trade. Due to China not having a democratic government which in turn entails stop-start policies they are able to plan for the long term which allows structure and not just short term political fixes such as in a democratic politics. However the down side to this is the corruption, governments which remains in power for years allows corruption which Is currently big problem in China, so as much as it can be said that economic growth has been a notion coupled with a change in government away from Mao’s communist society, problems such as corruption have also arisen.