Last week we published our March Thought Leader Interview with Arthur Kroeber, an expert on China and Managing Director at Dragonomics Research & Advisory. It offered some real insights into China from political, economic, technological and practical perspectives.
In addition to several ideas that I expected I found some surprises and excellent long-term considerations including:
- China already has the cleanest coal burning technology and will extend their lead because that have so much coal.
- There’s really not much business at stake for Google in China, it dwarfs what they have to lose from a lost of trust if they don’t do the right thing there.
- A very big looming question is whether or not the government can make the trade-off between control of the financial system (which they rely on to control the country) and greater efficiency and long-term growth.
- Electric vehicles seem like they would be a natural fit for an increasingly urban China but lack of any garage or home charging space means that most of the growth will be in the form of public vehicles.
- The real technology know-how continues to exist only in Taiwan and this is likely to be true for a long-time to come.
- Demographically China will begin to see the number of new workers decline each year. It will still be a big number but it will put upward pressure on wages (increasing consumption) and drive increases in efficiency.
There is plenty more where that came from in the report and as usual the picture of China from afar is way too simplified to be useful. Only by digging in and seeing the details can any useful predictive picture emerge.
R2 Members received this report via email last week and it is available online in our research library.
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[Disclosure: None.]
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