Looking for Sustained Growth and Greater Fiscal Restraint - India
Budget issues were not just the preserve of China in the last short while. On Friday February 26th, the Indian Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee presented the annual Union budget. The Finance Minister was optimistic on growth, having largely avoiding severe economic contraction (growth fell to a relatively robust 6.7 percent in 2008-9), he projected that Indian growth for the coming year would reach 7.2 percent.
Still on The Growth Path
Premier Wen Jiabao delivered his opening address on Friday (February 5, 2010) to the National People’s Congress. In many respects this economic statement seemed rather familiar. The government has targeted 8 percent growth; and it will maintain a, “pro-active fiscal policy and moderately easy monetary policy.” Even with continued infrastructure spending though at a 50 percent reduced rate from the previous year, it’s budget deficit will grow from 2.2 percent of GDP to a very moderate 2.8 percent of GDP. Wen also revealed that China achieved 8.7 percent growth for 2009 and a rather blistering 10.7 percent growth for the last quarter of 2009.
Appeasement, Rivalry and Concert-like Conditions
Charles Kupchan, an international relations expert at Georgetown University has written a recent and very interesting piece in Foreign Affairs (“Enemies Into Friends: How the United States Can Court Its Adversaries,” Vol. 89, No. 2(March/April 2010) pp. 120-135) on the new American administration’s policy of engagement, accommodation and rapprochement with its adversaries. This policy approach received much criticism when Obama, as a candidate, proposed open a dialogue with US adversaries including Cuba and Iran.
The ‘Values Gulf’ and National Interest in China’s Policy
In examining the emergence of the Gx process institutions, especially the recent creation of the G20 leaders summit, experts have recognized the obstacles that have been created by this enlargement. There seems little question that the emergence of the G20 at Pittsburgh raises questions particularly around effectiveness – the combination of commitment and implementation. They have also raised the ‘red flag’ (no pun intended) on the question of diminished likemindedness. Most experts looking at the dimension of legitimacy – membership representation –have applauded the permanent integration of the G5 – Brazil, India, China, South Africa and Mexico – not to mention other large emerging and developing states.
Seeing Differences – Structure and Behavior
The emergence and growing dominance of liberalism in the post Cold War World has profoundly changed the context and behavior of great powers in the international system. Liberalism and its various analytic threads can easily confuse our understanding of international relations. By ‘liberalism’ I am examining a world built on interdependence and globalization. It is built on state preferences and behavior. Andrew Moravcsik from Princeton University recently described it in his chapter on the European Union as a superpower, in, Rising States, Rising Institutions: Challenges for Global Governance (Brookings Institution, forthcoming 2010):
The Changing Landscape of Global Relations – The ‘new’ context of international relations
In examining the views of our experts at Princeton at the “New Foundations for Global Governance,” not surprisingly there are real differences in understanding the direction of global governance. Reflecting on the source of these differences, I have no magic answer but I think one critical factor is the importance that experts place on structure.
But before I get to examine structure, let me focus first on the context – that is the contemporary context - of international relations.
‘Still Addicted’ China’s path to sustainable economic growth
So, China with its 2009 export numbers - $1.2 trillion – has now surpassed the former number one - Germany ($1.2 trillion). China is currently the number one exporting country. The statistics not only confirmed China’s new status but reinforced the view that China’s economy is very healthy with exports in January increased 21 percent from a year earlier and imports were up a whopping 85 per cent from a year ago (see, Keith Bradsher and Judy Dempsey, “China Passes Germany as World’s Top Exporter”, NYT, (February 9, 2010)
The Painful Choice - New Leaders and Value Differences
Though the din has quieted with the emergence of the G20, for some time there has been a drum beat of disquiet for its predecessor the, The G7/8. Declared the ‘club if the rich,’ experts and officials from across the globe condemned the G7/8 for its failed
An Underlying Logic of Collaboration?
In discussing the ‘New Foundations of Global Governance’ (see my earlier blog post on the Princeton Conference, “Exploring the New Foundations of Global Governance”) at Princeton, experts could, and did, identify a series of new structural aspects relevant to global governance. The experts differed, however, when it came to assessing how these evolving structural aspects will likely impact on global governance. These evolving structural aspects at the 'cutting edge' of New Foundations included, among others, the emergence of new informal structures particularly from the Gx process, the emergence of Rising Powers - especially China but also India and Brazil - the growing constraint of domestic politics - in the US for sure but also in China and India - the reenergizing of US multilatera
Watching Agglomeration in Asia
We’ve been alert to economic agglomeration in Rising BRICSAM. At CIGI, we’ve identified ASEAN (The Association of South East Asian Nations) as a possible rising power in the context of global governance. But we’ve been hesitant (Community Versus Community? blog post, December 1, 2009). While it has some of the qualities of the most evident economic agglomeration of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century – the European Union, NAFTA, etc., ASEAN is both economically and politically less deeply integrated. But ASEAN is widening its economic ties.
