Latest Op Ed: Personally Financing Government Growth
A huge “thank you” to our senior BU Questrom administrators who help these international experiences come to life every year, and thrive. This month I was lucky enough to lead two different trips– over 45 students in total– to 3 countries, 4 cities and visits with 20 companies. An equally huge “thank you” to Jacob Mardell and The China Road for running my latest Op Ed work entitled: Personally Financing Government Growth. An abstract is below and full text available on this link.
No economy is ever on permanent cruise control. Regular government intervention is necessary and its required actions will change over time. Right now, the key to success for most of the large Asian economies is on increasing domestic consumption. No longer can they solely rely on foreign direct investment, or exports, to maintain solid, and continuous, GDP growth.
For the past two weeks I’ve traveled with two groups of Boston University business students to Shanghai, Bangkok, Beijing, and Tokyo, meeting with 20 companies in diverse industries about their business practices. Even though all three countries are in roughly the same geography, their stages of economic growth, and fiscal, monetary and governance policies couldn’t be more dissimilar. Thailand keeps revising its constitution to provide for better political harmony, Japan’s prime minister is on its third arrow of Abenomics, and China’s latest growth idea is to equally spread resource wealth amongst tier one, two and three cities.
The abolishment of term limits in China will give Xi Jinping more runway space to further improve the economy of the People’s Republic, without fear of political retribution or policy changes hampering his progress. Even in a one party system, politicians are not immune from exogenous factors interfering with their implementation. China’s situation is even more unique, however, as its one party is also closely tethered with central planning controls. But even that duopoly of sorts is not enough to necessarily guarantee positive GDP growth ad infinitum.
