Ever since the demise of Mao Zedong, founder of China’s communist party, his successor, Deng Xiaoping, opened the gates of China for foreign investments and businesses that made China an economic powerhouse.
Contrary to the communist beliefs that Mao strongly opposed during his seat in power, Deng have turned China from a backward agrarian economy into a capitalist system.
China is now the leading manufacturer and exporter of goods in the world market. Numerous companies from the United States and Europe outsource their work force in China purposely because of the country’s low-cost labour.
Eversince the late 90’s, China was able to transform itself into a very well developed country packed with new and modernized skyscrapers and an elaborate form of economy. A GDP growth of approximately 7-9 percent has been the latest forecast for the year 2009.
Business competency is also common among the Chinese. In countries that have a significant population of Chinese, a lot of them make their living by means of selling all kinds of consumer goods and most of their businesses are stories of success.
Even though China’s economy is on the rise, a lot of finance experts still see loads of barriers that could halt its development or even cause its economic demise.
Economic imbalance is one of these causes. One of which is the issue of imbalance in terms of development in favor of urban areas over rural. Although the improvement on the urban lifestyle, a lot of China’s rural population still come across hardships particularly in the farming and housing communities.
This situation might somewhat resemble Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” where Mao ordered farmers to become steel workers resulting to widespread famine. Today’s China, however, have a more balanced food production than ever before but it still has a long way to go before it can achieve perfect balance.
China also has its share of problems concerning politics and how it is being handled. So far, every dissent in the country has been suppressed with no mercy within its mainland and other places they claim to be theirs such as Tibet.
China is also poised to keep Tibet under an iron grip and their way of doing this is by emigration of the Chinese population to Tibet, constructions, and banning freedom of expression.
Another area known as Xinjiang, home for considerable number of Chinese Muslims known as Uighurs, is also experiencing both economic and political unsteadiness because of unrest.
The last thing that is perhaps the most serious of all is climate change. China has now greatly overtook the US in carbon emissions and pollution. The consequences could not just upset China, but also its neighboring countries and countries around the world. The irreparable effects of climate change will cause rising sea levels will undoubtedly cause problems in China’s south, and could even melt glaciers from China’s western part and the Tibetan region which will ultimately be a source of flooding and fresh water shortages.
