CKGSB Knowledge - China Business and Economy

a post-pandemic world

The pandemic has had a huge impact, and in this issue of CKGSB Knowledge we look to what the future holds for China in this completely reconfigured post-pandemic world from a variety of perspectives. Our cover story, “Forecast 2030” (page 19), looks at the opportunities and the challenges for China’s economy over the coming decade. The COVID-19 pandemic is going to be seen as a major turning point, and “One Virus, Two Systems” (page 11) explores just how the country managed to become the first major economy to recover and bounce back. The vaccine surge is also a fundamental part of how the next decade will pan out, and China is seizing the initiative there too, as we explain in “The Race to Vaccinate” (page 15). Also in this issue, we address…

looking to the future

The pandemic has propelled the idea of digital privacy into sharp focus. What is the prognosis for global digital governance? Even as much of the world continues to reel from the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, China has emerged from it faster and stronger than any other major economy, at least till now. In line with the International Monetary Fund’s prediction, China was the only economy to achieve growth amid the global health crisis, with a year-on-year gross domestic product (GDP) growth of 2.3% in 2020. While media reports largely attribute China’s success to its strict central control, the role of digitalization in its pandemic response also deserves attention. In particular, the pervasiveness of smartphones and the high level of digitalization of social functions enabled the government to monitor and control the…

a more multipolar world

As the world continues to battle the COVID-19 pandemic, leaders of organizations have had to determine a way forward in light of another challenge—what many reports claim to be an increasingly deglobalized world. Governments and business leaders are now reconsidering global supply chains, questioning alliances and highlighting national security concerns, while emphasizing the importance of domestic sourcing. After decades of increasing globalization in capital flows and trade, trends increasingly appear to point in the opposite direction. In this interview, however, Anil K. Gupta explains how globalization is not dying, and in fact, we are moving toward a more multipolar world. Competition will be not just between China and the United States. Rather, it will likely become either a multi-way competition or a competition between alliances. Q. One of the most significant trends…

one virus, two systems

In early 2020, as China went into military-style lockdown to combat the virus, Jasmine Xiao suffered sleepless nights worrying about her only child and her husband whose job as a supply chain manager for a state-run car factory in Shanghai was suddenly on hold. “He did not share much in order to keep me calm, but I could tell from reading online that the situation was bad,” says Xiao. The teacher-turned-housewife fretted as pressure from her husband’s lost work and diminished wages mounted—their weekly household budget was trimmed by one-fifth, forcing the family to pause repayments on their car loan. Friends also suffered—Xiao recalls consoling a neighbor who lost a seven-figure investment in a restaurant after it closed in May 2020, less than six months after opening. As the lockdowns ravaged demand…

the race to vaccinate

Louis Dee, a medical intern in a major hospital in the Philippine capital of Manila, was initially highly suspicious about the Chinese COVID vaccine, but he took the injection anyway, and his opinion flipped to positive. As a medical worker, he was particularly sensitive to the negative perceptions attached to the Chinese vaccines being rushed to market around the world. “I was very skeptical of the results, and I really didn’t trust the judgment of any organization or regulatory body,” he says. “I was concerned, and basically felt the vaccine was unlikely to be any more effective than a placebo.” The first Chinese vaccine shipped to the Philippines was CoronaVac, produced by Sinovac, a Beijing-based biotech firm, and Dee says he observed that people taking it had no side effects except initially…

forecast 2030

There are few stories as dramatic as the rise of China. Ever since the market reform policies kicked in 40-plus years ago, the economy has followed a growth trajectory that other countries can only envy. Over the course of four decades, China has miraculously transformed from an impoverished nation to the world’s second-largest economy. Increasingly, experts project that China will become the world’s biggest economy by as early as 2028—the pandemic has accelerated the progress by at least half a decade compared to most previous estimates. While it makes perfect sense for China’s economy to be the largest given that it has a population of 1.4 billion—more than four times the size of the US—the speed with which the country has caught up is unprecedented. Now the “factory of the world,” the…