Próxima Rev. Económica

[Patacôncio]

Encontrei este artigo na Ásia. Simplesmente esclarecedor.

Há muita e boa gente que tem medo da Ásia. Uns dizem que nos roubam empregos, destroiem as nossas empresas e asfixiam os preços mundiais.

Outros dizem que na Ásia, há um conjunto de países que estão a degradar as nossas condições de vida pela concorrência que nos fazem, devido às suas diferentes protecções sociais.

Algumas destas críticas têm razão de ser. Mas a Ásia está a fazer a sua Revolução Indústrial e é muito mais que estas críticas que alguns ocidentais fazem.

Mais de metade da população mundial vive na Ásia. Só mais de um terço vive em dois países: China e Índia. E nestes países, devido à liberalização das suas economias e das suas sociedades, o crescimento económico é elevado. Sobretudo na China. Mas este crescimento económico é também assente numa formidável taxa de poupança, por parte das famílias.

Mas a Ásia está a mudar. E está a mudar assustadoramente. Hoje, quer na China quer na Índia, há uma classe média emergente, que procura ter um estilo de vida como o ocidental. Leia-se europeu e americano. E terá profundas implicações, quer em termos sociais, em termos políticos e, também económicos.

Em termos económicos, e aqui é que desejamos dissertar, a revolução irá mudar o mundo. Todo o mundo. E, não somos os únicos. Como poderão ler o artigo seguinte.

Hoje, sobretudo na China, há um enorme número de chinseses que pertencem à classe média. Estima-se em 300 milhões de pessoas. Mais de metade da UE e mais que a população dos USA.

Esta neófita classe média aspira a determinados bens de consumo, que já são normais no ocidente: televisores, figoríficos, carros, telemóveis, computadores, aquecedores, ar-condicionado, rádios, DVDs, diverso mobiliário, perfumes, roupas, etc., etc., etc. e tal.

As taxas de poupança elevadas poderão dar lugar ao consumo de produtos e serviços, como acontece no ocidente. Além da casinha, como todos sonham. A Koreia do Sul, em 2002, terá crescido graças ao elevado consumo interno. Uma mudança profunda na mentalidade asiática.

As previsões para o consumo asiático são de tal ordem reveladoras da revolução económica e social ques e dará, que é bastante díficil prever com exactidão as futuras tendências mundiais.

Sabemos que a Ásia é deficitária em termos alimentares. Mesmo com as revoluções agrícolas, quer na mais conhecida ìndia, quer na China, estima-se que se os asiáticos atingirem padrões de consumo ocidentais, terão que importar muitos alimentos. Quer devido à falta de solos com aptidões agrícolas, quer devido à escassez de água, que na Ásia é um problema sério.

Se a Ásia tiver um padrão de consumo parecido com o Japonês actual, que importa quase tudo o que come... teremos aqui uma mudança maluca no comércio internacional de alimentos. Quais as regiões aptas a fornecer a Ásia ? USA/Canadá; Europa e América do Sul, mais própriamente o Brasil, que precisa de resolver os problemas de escassez de água numa importante parcela do seu território. Talvez com os famosos transvases.

Ora, a Ásia tem sido a principal fornecedora de produtos de mais baixo valor acrescentado, devido aos seus baixos salários. Mas a Ásia, relembrando Braudel, pode ter tudo para fazer a sua revolução indústrial, do género mediterrâneo, pós-Descobrimentos. E tem sobretudo a força do número. Que pode fazer um mercado "interno" que extravasará para fora das suas fronteiras as suas potencialidades.

Alguns negam esta visão. Dizem que a China, por exemplo, ainda só representa 4 % da Produção Indústrial mundial. Talvez não seja bem esse número, mas maior. Todavia, este mercado por si só é capaz de tranformar toda a região à sua volta. Por exemplo, a Índia, está cada vez mais afectada pela economia chinesa. Para o bem e para o mal. A China tem crescido muito á custa da indústria ao passo que a Índia tem crescido sobretudo à custa dos serviços. Os dois países "sonham" misturar as duas economias: os serviços mais a indústria, para dominar o mundo. Pelo menos essa tem sido a ideia das negociações entre estes dois países, que tiveram uma importante cimeira recentemente. A primeira importante desde há muitos e longos anos.

Todavia, a Ásia irá explodir o seu crescimento económico. E será dificil às autoridades convencer as pessoas a manterem a taxa de poupança elevada, pois o estilo de vida ocidental é demasiado atractivo para que possa ser "varrido" da cabeça das pessoas. Nota-se na juventude japonesa, koreana, sul da China, Singapura, Formosa e até Hong-Kong.

Por isso, é expectável que o "boom demográfico" terá importantes reflexos na economia mundial. Muito mais que o que sonham os mais optimistas. Porque, só a China "mete" no seu território, a UE, os USA, o Japão, a Koreia, Singapura, etc. Este imenso mercado despertando para o consumo de massas, como defendia a Teoria do Crescimento de Rostow, irá mudar profundamente o consumo mundial. Ninguém ficará indifirente.

Alguns números. A Volkswagem tem aumentado as vendas em cerca de 50 % ao ano, o número de carros no mercado chinês. E a maioria é fabricada fora da China.

Só cerca de 2 a 3 % da população chinesa tem computador em casa.

A China já é o maior mercado mundial em determiandos produtos, como por exemplo, chips e semi-conductores.

Mas a China ainda não fez o seu "take-off" económico. Quando o fizer...

Tudo indica que nos próximos 10 a 20 anos, a China e talvez a Índia terá um salto enorme no seu estilo de vida. Abalarão o mundo. Mais do que supomos.

Será que Portugal ganhará com este boom asiático ? Acredito que sim. Pelo menos no Turismo e na venda de determinados produtos e serviços. Como os vinhos, com o Vinho do Porto à cabeça. Acreditarão eles um dia que o Vinho do Porto pode ser um interessante afrodisíaco ? heehhhehehh

Quem sabe ?

[Patacôncio]

In http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Asian_Economy/EC15Dk01.html

Asia's consumer revolution gets serious

By John Berthelsen

The consumer revolution that Asia has been watching over the past 10 years is starting to turn serious. Driven by changing demographics and increasing wealth, consumers appear to be caught up in an awakening that promises to revolutionize world economics and propel world trade and industry for a generation.

That is because Asia is now at a unique confluence of circumstances that has been developing for more than a decade - rising economic growth, stable incomes, falling birth rates and household sizes, and high savings rates. Trade patterns are being altered by World Trade Organization rules, opening the doors for Western exporters. Even at a time when the rest of the world looks perilously near a clash between the United States and most of the Islamic world and economic conditions are unsettled at best, Asia's borders are more fixed than in decades, with the exception of some adventurism on the part of North Korea.

A generational shift is under way as well that has profound implications for cultural traditions - for good or ill. What is being imported from the West may not be just consumerism but undesirable social mores.

Christopher Woods, global emerging-markets equity strategist for Credit Lyonnais Securities Asia (CLSA) in Hong Kong, in an impressively researched study titled "Asia's Billion Boomers" released last September, wrote that believes the Asian region's fundamentals "are set to drive world economic growth for the next decade or two".

At the heart of Woods' thesis are two major developments. First, as occurred in the United States at the end of World War II, a new generation of so-called baby-boomers is coming into its own, and just beginning to spend on themselves and their lifestyles. Woods believes that across Asia, including China and India, there are 1 billion of them.

Second, living patterns are changing. The model is the United States, where in the 1950s household formation started to increase faster than the population as a whole, as children started to move out from their parents' homes. The trend accelerated markedly as America's baby-boomers came of age. Those new households required everything from the house itself to everything in it - refrigerators and stoves, pots and pans, toasters and stereos.

Asia's renaissance owes its origins to Japan's mercantilist economy, locking out exports while exporting to the West, which has remained a model since the Japanese boom got under way in the 1950s. Asia's industrial plant has largely been devoted to producing consumer goods that moved from Asian factories to American and European homes and streets. Export flows from the West to Asia have been dominated by goods for assembly and re-export back to the West.

While US gross domestic product (GDP) per capita was rising 576 percent over the past 30 years, Asia's outside Japan rose almost twice as fast, at 1,067 percent. But consumer spending didn't rise at anywhere near that rate as governments actively sought to hold it down. Now, however, the brakes are coming off. Asia itself is increasingly buying what it is selling, and probably will be buying what the world is selling as well as Asian consumers increasingly look to Western styling, engineering, cuisine and entertainment.

The new home formation trend is illustrated in a research paper titled "Life Cycle Saving and the Demographic Transition in East Asia" by academics Ronald Lee, Andrew Mason and Timothy Miller. They found that the percentage of Japanese elderly living with their children declined by 30 percentage points between 1950 and 1990. In 1973, more than 80 percent of Taiwan's elderly lived with their children. By 1993, that had fallen to 60 percent of elderly men and 70 percent of elderly women. Sadly, while 65 percent of Japanese women in 1950 expected to rely on their children in old age, that had fallen to 18 percent by 1990. With no elderly families to support, discretionary income is increasingly going to consumer goods.

At the same time, women are joining the workforce at record levels, particularly in Singapore and Hong Kong. In Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Thailand and Bangladesh, free-trade and export-processing zones and other urban factories, at least 80 percent of the workforce are women, according to TIE-Asia, an independent regional labor network. To a great extent, they are exploited. Many send a high proportion of their income to help support large or extended families in rural areas. Nonetheless, this reporter recalls meeting a young woman in a free-trade-zone factory in Penang several years ago. Asked why she was working in a factory manufacturing semiconductors, she slapped her thigh under her smock.

"This," she said. "Blue jeans." Those blue jeans have profound implications. To switch from the modest clothing that many Malay Muslim women wear to blue jeans represents freedom and almost certainly rebellion from parents. It represents an acceptance of American style that many Asian countries would rather not see.

What this means is that as women in Asia go to the office rather than stay at home, birth rates are dropping precipitously. Births in Hong Kong in 1999, at 0.93 per woman, were the lowest ever recorded in any economy. Singapore is trying intensively to increase its birth rate, which is also below replacement rates. (Singapore has been much derided for its attempts to play Cupid to its yuppies through its matchmaking Social Development Unit, or SDU, which was immediately tabbed "single, desperate and ugly" by wags.)

Young couples prefer smaller families. And, with fewer children in the home, Asian families have pots of money to spend. Savings rates across Asia are far higher than anywhere in the West. The average savings rate across Asia outside Japan, according to the Asia Development Bank, was 31.6 percent of GDP in 2002. By 1997, the Chinese were saving an astonishing 75 percent of their total income. The only countries in Asia with savings rates below 20 percent are Pakistan, at 12.7 percent of GDP, and the Philippines, at 16.8 percent. Even those low rates are still healthy compared with a US saving rate that actually went negative in 2001 as American consumers continued to prop up a flagging economy whose industrial production had come to a virtual standstill.

"The important point ... is that there is a huge scope for savings to decline in Asia before there is any question of macroeconomic vulnerability," CLSA's Woods points out.

That is starting to happen. Credit-card usage is on the rise. One national bank project in China expects to issue 200 million credit and cash cards by 2005 to a total urban population of about 300 million people in 400 cities nationwide. South Korean consumers are already considered to be the engine that drove the country's economic growth in 2002, somewhat to their grief. As many as 10 percent of South Koreans are behind on monthly payments, forcing the government to order banks and credit-card companies to tighten lending rules and reduce limits on cash advances.

Even a small fall in savings rates, at a time when households are being formed faster than the population is growing and wealth is increasing, should mean that per capita consumption of consumer durables such as refrigerators, cookers and televisions would grow substantially. Nor will consumer durables be the only category to grow. Discretionary spending can be expected to skyrocket on everything from movies to luxury items such as jewelry, cars, and the other items that powered the huge boom in US consumerism that has lasted for more than four decades.

The result is that as young Asian families go out on their own, as American ones did, they will have lots of discretionary savings to spend - on consumer goods. Young women in Shanghai, Singapore and Hong Kong now look as sophisticated as their counterparts in San Francisco and New York. The image of the young, hip Singaporean or Hong Konger, driving a BMW, drinking Martell cognac, wearing a Rolex and Gucci shoes and eating in an Italian restaurant, is beginning to spread increasingly out from the major cities. India, for example, now has about 300 million people who can be termed middle-class - more than the entire population of the United States.

While statistics in China are notoriously unreliable, as of 2000 the average urban household now had "one television, electric fan and woolen coat, and at least two small sofas", according to Euromonitor, the international market research firm. The majority of rural households now have a TV, and nearly half have color television. About 3 percent own a computer.

Today, the average Chinese household shops for food daily, only buying fresh produce for that day's consumption, with an average daily expenditure of perhaps 30-40 yuan (US$3.75-$4) per trip. Not only in China but across the rest of Asia as well, the consumer is likely to patronize different shops for each item. The produce, the fish and other meats, probably come from no more than a few kilometers away.

But increasingly, as supermarkets spread across the countryside, more and more shoppers visit out-of-town shopping malls and supermarkets. These are institutions that have the resources to bring in consumables from far afield, and which consumers increasingly want. In Singapore and Hong Kong in particular, because of their status as free-trade ports, it is routine to find Danish ham, Dutch chicken, Belgian artichokes, Scottish salmon, and potted meats from the United Kingdom. Wines come from California, Australia, Italy, Chile, and China. American packaged foods are very popular.

Now supermarket chains are now developing all across Asia, from Indonesia to India to South Korea, and bringing with them these kinds of international choices. Wal-Mart, Costco, the UK-based Tesco and others have taken a stake in Asia as the hypermarkets move in. Costco says it plans up to 70 stores in Japan. Wal-Mart has purchased an interest in the 400-store Seiyu food and clothing chain and says it expects international sales to amount to as much as a third of its total revenue within five years. Wal-Mart and the French Carrefour chain now have nearly 50 stores in China. That is already beginning to wreak damage on mom-and-pop operations across Asia. Thailand has begun to experience protests against big-box operators like the ones the US has experienced for a decade (see Free trading at the global hypermarket, November 23, 2002).

The big question is how much of Asia will follow the West into all of the practices that they find culturally and socially unattractive. The move away from home by children so far has not cut severely into a culture of respect and veneration for elders. The younger generation are still very likely to spend all of the major holidays - and weekends as well - with parents and grandparents. Grave-cleaning days result in the congregating of entire families.

It will be sad indeed if, for instance, a big nursing-home industry appears in Asia to take care of the elderly who can no longer take care of themselves, and whose family will not take care of them. There are questions whether the breakdown of families will result in youthful rebellion and crime. But the revolution is under way. It only remains to be seen which way it will go.

[Patacôncio]

Rumo a um mercado de biliões, com a Índia a correr atrás da cornucópia.

In http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/EB22Df02.html

Regional trade deals scare India

By Indrajit Basu

KOLKATA - In Asia today, free-trade agreements are in fashion. Last November 5, at the summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations held in the capital city of Cambodia, Phnom Penh, China signed a deal with the members of ASEAN to set up the world's largest free-trade zone in the region. The zone would generate US$1.2 trillion worth of trade annually.

Soon after this announcement Japan, too, said that it would enter into a free-trade area (FTA) agreement with the 10-member ASEAN grouping. And subsequently, in a mega-announcement, Japan, China and South Korea said they had also agreed to examine the prospects of setting up an FTA that covers the three nations (ASEAN plus 3) in the medium to short run.

Singapore is not left behind either. The country has just concluded an FTA agreement with the United States and Australia, and is negotiating another with New Zealand. Moreover, the FTA agreement between Singapore and Japan is already operational, and Japan is pursuing similar deals with South Korea, Thailand and the Philippines. And, from January 1 this year, the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA), an agreement that endeavors to increase ASEAN's competitive edge as a production base geared for the world market through the elimination of intra-regional tariffs and non-tariff barriers, came into force.

In a globalizing economy, FTA agreements are attractive trade tools because they not only offer market access through lower tariffs, they also often include regional investment agreements and extend credit lines and double-taxation-avoidance agreements between participating nations.

The frenzied deal-making is obviously good news for other countries in the region. However, for India, it hasn't come as such. "Clearly, India has been left out of most of these initiatives," said Rajesh Mehta of Research and Information Systems for Non-Aligned Countries, adding: "There is a real danger of India being left out of mega trading blocks that emerge in the region."

The Indian government is understandably worried. Soon after all these announcements, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee said the country would begin work on signing an FTA with ASEAN over the next 10 years. In fact, in his visit to Thailand in mid-February, the country's deputy prime minister, L K Advani, and Thai Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai agreed to put in place a framework for an India-Thailand agreement by July. This agreement is expected to double trade between the two countries, which now stands at a modest $1 billion annually. And, according to reports, a similar agreement is brewing with Singapore. Besides, India and Australia on Wednesday agreed to expand their $1.7 billion trade by enhancing ties in telecom, roads and energy-related sectors.

But some economic experts think India has woken up too late and should be moving much faster. "It took 10 years for India to become a summit-level partner at ASEAN ... India must have FTA agreements in place with all members of ASEAN in next two years," said an editor of one of India's leading financial-news dailies, who is also a noted economist. "Indeed, India needs to move faster," said Souvik Mukherjee, an economist with an industry lobby in India, adding: "In direct contrast, China and ASEAN will announce some tariff cuts as early as the beginning of 2004."

What is worrying Indian economic experts is that India's trade with ASEAN countries is growing faster than many other trading blocks, such as the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries, the European Union and the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA). For instance, exports to ASEAN countries rose by almost 20 percent in 2002, while exports to the CIS, the EU and NAFTA actually fell by 6 percent, 5 percent and 8 percent respectively. India has not managed to improve its trade with its neighboring SAARC countries either. Despite years of working on improving trade with SAARC, exports from India to the grouping at $1.97 billion were about half of ASEAN's $3.39 billion.

Thus any adverse impact on India's trade with ASEAN will affect the country's overall trade. For instance, predicts Mehta, when the agreements between China and ASEAN come into force, which will result in huge tariff cuts between these countries, exports of India's marine products and livestock to ASEAN, which are significant, will be directly affected.

But that's not the greatest of worries. China is quickly emerging to be one of India's most prominent partner countries for bilateral trade, and India is worried about competition in terms of exports from ASEAN countries to China. The ASEAN block's trade with China is already growing. In 1991, ASEAN accounted for about 6 percent of China's imports, but in 2002, according to official Chinese statistics, ASEAN accounted for more than 8 percent of Chinese imports. In 2002, there was an estimated 20 percent rise in exports to China from ASEAN countries.

ASEAN countries, too, are getting aggressive. According to economist Niranjan Rajadhyaksha, ASEAN countries are proactively trying to grow their trade with China to take advantage of that country's $244 billion per year of imports and to reduce dependence on America and Europe. For instance, Thailand's exports to neighboring Asian countries, including China, since 1999 have grown from 13 percent to 15 percent, while the share of its trade to the United States fell from 23 percent to 21 percent and to Europe from 16 percent to 14 percent.

Experts therefore feel that India's response will need to be multi-faceted, that India will need to engage strategically with each ASEAN member bilaterally, even as it pursues Indo-ASEAN economic cooperation. Some say even that may not be enough. The grouping of Japan, China and South Korea with ASEAN is another big source of worry. Exports to Japan from India are already dwindling, and now ASEAN is a threat too to India, for its exports to Japan. Experts suggest that ideally India should join with Japan, China and South Korea to form a forum of ASEAN plus 4.

But would India's policymakers think alike and work toward that? India's federal budget on February 28 will provide an indication of which way the country is heading.

Note
ASEAN embraces Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.

The SAARC countries are Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The CIS countries are Russia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.

NAFTA comprises the United States, Mexico and Canada.

The EU currently comprises France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Spain, Belgium, Greece, the Netherlands, Portugal, Austria, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Ireland and Luxembourg.

[Sansão]

Olá bom dia ...lindo menino!!!muito estudioso!!!:D :D :D :confused:

Agora só falta por os chinas ,indios,viets,etc e tantos ....com os mesmos habitos dos japas....!!!!


Depois vens aqui com esse ar maternal....e concupiscente!!!ihihiihihii...

falar dos resultados???! se cá estiveres.....

[magoo]

É perfeitamente evidente nessa tua cabeça que o sistema de quase-escravatura e absoluta miséria de "indios", "chinas" e "viets" é de longe preferível aos hábitos dos "japas".

Tens medo que eles se afastem da "luminosa via dos socialismo" ?:D :D :D


Parabéns Patacôncio !

:confused:Há muito que ando a matutar qual a fonte da próxima "bolha"/salto qualitativo do sistema ! E a China pode muito bem a ser o motor do próximo ciclo económico mundial... dá que pensar.

Moo