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What about nominal GDP and the consumption value for this qtr? Do see this as an upward trend for the rest of the year?

This is a trick question and I’m afraid you may need a mayonnaise jar, discarded refrigerator parts and lactobacilliAlso see: The HooksI also read somewhere: Personal consumption is still running at 70% of GDP … hmmm?

I agree with your comments. I don’t have your direct experience, but my wife of 2 years is Chinese. She was born and raised in what used to be called Manchuria, which suffered terribly during the Japanese occupation.

After the massive earthquake last year in central China, many older Chinese, including my wife’s parents, were horrified at the thought of accepting Japanese humanitarian aid because Japan was going to use Military planes to deliver the goods.

By contrast, my wife loves Japanese food and buys her skin care products online from a Japanese company. She won’t even consider using any other products.

The most popular form of television entertainment in China are TV series produced in Korea.

So the generational attitude-shift is real IMO.

Also, I think it is no small thing that for almost 200 years before the creation of the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese were subject to rapacious exploitation by the Brits and the Americans. Think Opium.

I’m not saying the Chinese hate us. IMO they’re much too practical for that.

But they fully intend to be self-sufficient and no longer dependent on trade with the U.S. for their economy.

I predict (FWIW) that Shanghai will be the economic center of the world by 2020.

Tim in Sugar Hill

Sure the system was unsustainable. It presisted for as long as it did because both sides saw the advantages and ignored the negatives. The question is what to do about the aftermath. That means Asia has to come up with something other than exports to spur its development. And the US has to figure out what to do about its debt. (I’m betting at some point this will involve inflation.) All this could create another collapse down the road.

In terms of the politics, in the absence of any real coherent US policy or leadership, regions and individuals countries can be expected to pursue what they see as their own best courses.

Regions like Asia and Europe also suffer from a lack of political cohesion and divergent internal economic priorities. In Europe, it’s Anglo vs. Continental, and East vs. West. In Asia, it’s China vs. everybody else. It is hard to see an effective unified approach emerging in either area. Of couse, it is equally hard to see one in this country which at least does have political cohesion on its side.

On your second point: increased trade relationship. Japan and S. Korea has moved from direct to US export to indirect to US via China (and others) due to labor cost, etc.Any idea of the weight of transnational firms in this restructuring of relations which, from my point of view, has also been a greater inter-penetrating [not same as inter-dependence] of national economies?

I still wonder if the IMF had anything to do with the speculative attack on the Thai bhat that started the crisis.

Don’t laugh; a former IMF economist, Budhoo, or Budhue, resigned from the IMF in disgust over what he claimed was the deliberate undermining of… Trinidad’s(???) economy.

The ideologs pushing the Washington Concensus were just a little too arrogant in pushing the reform packages they did. How could they not see how disruptive their reforms would be?

They would be difficult in a solid economy, let alone one in crisis.

Between the social unrest the policies caused, and the thoughtless demands they made to some African countries to stop subsidizing medicine, the IMF has killed a lot of people.

The most embarrassing thing is if you look at their reform package, it contradicts almost everything the US has done in this crisis.

Then again, I’m not sure we actually practice anything we preach these days.

As far as the Chinese and others sinking way too much money in depreciating U.S. dollar assets. That is the price they have paid for building excess reserves, an outgrowth of the horrors of the Asian crisis. They really have no one to blame but themselves, just as the U.S. has no one to blame but itself for running up huge debt loads (I don’t see the Germans, Dutch or Swiss doing this, for example).

You should also realize the Chinese have been seeking ways around this problem for some time now, the Unocal transaction being the first salvo:

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/07/11/050711ta_talk_surowiecki

Stymied by protectionism, the Chinese have been forced to use other means to invest their dollars.

To ASPD: “Younger Chinese and S Koreans don’t have the visceral dislike of Japanese.”

The “generational shift” to which you refer wasn’t a change in attitude…it was a change in birth rates. There are too few Japanese peers for Chinese and S. Koreans to hate. Japan is dying and isn’t vital enough to generate antipathy.

As for the rest of Edward’s post:

We really should de-couple from our use of the word “de-coupling”.

With the exception of the “Indonesian Hobbit” referred to in the NC Links Section, we’re all coupled.

How can you even have a post about Asia de-coupling from US and not mention the age of Japan, gender imbalances of China…not to mention the re-disintegration of Russia and that other country to the south…the one with a billion
people?

It’s not a linear world. And short of looking at basic demographics, predictions about de-coupling are too damn linear. Any one of the above items will have HUGE impacts on the future of Asia. How things play out is impossible to predict.

Your post demonstrates how coupled your thinking is…to the notion that the future of Asia shall be determined solely by what are predominantly Western issues.

Asia has its own internal dynamics. Assertions about “de-coupling” without taking these internal dynamics into account are woefully incomplete.

Of course, it’s very difficult to take internal dynamics into account…because these things are beneath the surface and impossible to predict.

Therefore, it’s probably best not to make these kinds of predictions.

ASPD

p.s. @ Anon. Jones
Did they really have much choice? US$ is still the reserve currency. It’s about who control the system. I’m sure they’re prepared to lose a few hundred billion $ (or more) for this.