Can the world afford a China?

America is looking for a China! Or rather the whole world is looking for a China. Economists are predicting that inflation will rise faster in the near future, thanks to mortgage subprime financial crisis for bursting the bubble, resulting into a recession if a China that can manufacture goods at the same costs as today's China, is not found soon. Consumers will cut down on spending, slowing down the economy further and speeding up the arrival of recession, if a China that can sell goods at the same price as today's China, is not found soon. Rising oil prices, sky rocketing raw material costs, and increasing salaries are indicating that Chinese goods will soon become expensive for Americans if a China like today's China is not found soon.

This is a real and immediate threat to America and the world, unlike the chemical weapons threat from Iraq. Ironically, the unreal threat from Iraq cost US couple of trillion dollars (Refer to the article Iraq war costs could top $2trillion); it diverted America's attention and kept it busy while the real threat started to appear closer. In Indian epic Ramayana, a story goes that when Lord Rama went after a golden deer in a forest, his wife Sita was in real danger but Lord Rama's focus was hunting the deer down. The deer was actually Maricha, an obedient subject of Ravana, the King of demons. Maricha took the form of unreal golden deer at Ravana's behest. And Lord Rama fell to mistaken identity; Sita got kidnapped by Ravana when Rama was away. The moral of the story is that in dire situations, real and unreal threats are difficult to differentiate and even kings can fail.

(On second thoughts, maybe Bush saw the real threat of inflation coming, thought of countering it by controlling more oil, found Iraq to be the most legitimate target and ended up attacking it since Saddam wasn't handing over the keys to the oil wells and maybe it wasn't a case of mistaken identity? That probably makes every American smirk; democrats because they don't believe that Bush can think that far and republicans because they think that they weren't wrong after all)

Coming back to the topic of this post, India is touted as the China the world is looking for. According to a global survey done among 340 companies, over 50% of the respondents intend to move part of their manufacturing to India. Refer to the article Manufacturing India to challenge China.

This is great news for a country like India where more than 70% of over a billion people live on less than US$2 per day. Proponents of idea that only job creation can eradicate poverty may see this as a golden opportunity since only manufacturing can create jobs at such a large scale.

But can today's world afford a China? Chinese and people all over the world are paying a very high price in terms of the damage done to the environment by the way China has progressed. Only 1 percent of the country’s 560 million city dwellers breathe air considered safe by the EU. Although China holds fourth-largest freshwater resources in the world (after Brazil, Russia, and Canada), two-thirds of China's approximately 660 cities have less water than they need and 110 of them suffer severe shortages, all this because of overuse, and pollution. China’s cement factories use 45 percent more power than the world average, and its steel makers use about 20 percent more . The country consumed some 2.4 billion tons of coal in 2006 - more than the United States, Japan, and Britain combined and is the world's largest contributor of carbon dioxide, a leading greenhouse gas, to the atmosphere. Can you imagine what will happen if India follows the same path! Knowing all the negative effects, would you still want India to become a China, for the sake of this world? Think again.