Francesco Sisci
20th August, 2009
BEIJING – The economic rebound has started in Asia. Yet this is not simply an economic story, it is a political one made of data and history.
The data first. In the second quarter, South Korea grew by about 10% on an annual basis. Taiwan grew even more, as its industrial production recovered strongly. India’s industry showed a brilliant 14% increase in that period, and China, the engine of regional growth and the main trading partner of all these countries, saw industrial production rise 11%, while the very significant indicator of car sales increased by a miraculously high 70%.
All-in-all, emerging Asia in 2009 should grow by 5%, while the developed world of the old ruling class clustered in the Group of Seven should contract by 3.5%. In other words, during the crisis, the Asian emerging economies led by China are catching up withthe old world even faster than during normal times.
That means that Asia’s and China’s growth is increasingly decoupled from the fate of the West, as The Economist remarked in its latest issue, and the region is finding its own path to recovery without recourse to the former import markets of America and Europe, which only one year ago seemed to drive its growth.
In These New Times 