Onto the dragon's back
August 16, 2003
Manufacturing, services, education - and now a hunger for commodities. While many find China's latest revolution too hot to handle, the opportunities for Australia keep growing. Malcolm Maiden reports.
I have seen Australia's future - and it looks a lot like Australia's golden past.
China's manufacturing revolution is casting a lengthening shadow over competing economies, but Australia is, once again, a lucky country.
"China has 1.2 billion people and a virtually endless supply of cheap labour," says Morgan Stanley's Hong Kong-based economist and China specialist, Andy Xie.
Manufacturers are paying $US100 ($152) a month for labour in the main population centres on the Chinese coast and $US60 a month in the provinces just behind it. Those numbers don't just blow manufacturers in developed economies out of the water: China's wages are also about 10 per cent of what is being paid by manufacturers in Taiwan, Hong Kong and South Korea, and barely half what is paid in Thailand and Malaysia.
They are underwriting a economic revolution that is forcing painful adjustments in the economies that surround China, including China's Special Administrative Region - Hong Kong - and Taiwan.
Foreign companies are pouring into China. Direct foreign investment, often in Chinese joint ventures, has surged from around $US5 billion in 1990 to $US55 billion in 2002.
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