Synchronized New Industrial Revolution and Supply-side Structural Reform
China’s economic performances should be observed and analyzed in the context of world economic restructure, but also from the perspective of the new industrial revolution, supply-side reform, and the relationship between the two.
Anew industrial revolution, evident in new technologies, wider access to the Internet, and computerization across all sectors is changing the world. Its impact encampasses lifestyles, thinking, and the political and social structures of human society. Big data are changing the contours of the physical and biological environments. The narrowing gap between virtual reality and real life is creating a new world, a new economy, and a new normal. All this determines the global economy in which China must find its place by deepening reforms, a key move as structural reform of the supply side comes into focus.
We must observe and analyze China’s economic reform in the context of restructuring and transformation of the world economy, but also from the perspective of the new industrial revolution (the fourth industrial revolution), supply-side structural reform, and the relationship between the two.
Bigger Risks
After decades of economic globalization, trade and investment continue to grow at a rapid pace. Industrialization is taking off in many countries, creating new emerging economies. The world GDP now exceeds US $70 trillion. In purchasing power parity (PPP), this represents US $118 trillion. In terms of PPP, emerging economies in 2015 accounted for more than half of the global GDP, or 57.6 percent, accounting for more than two-thirds of global economic growth, exactly 68 percent, and China alone represents half of that figure.
However, it is clear that this pattern of development has reached its limits and the guiding principle must be renewed. Some U.S. economists now believe that many countries in Latin America, Asia, and Africa have been wrong to follow blindly the neo-liberal policies advocated by the IMF and the World Bank, and supported by the West, especially the United States. The result is the current recession and stagnation in these countries. The 2008 financial crisis is also the result of shortsighted economic and financial policies that were enforced for