¶ … Business Environemnt of China
Main issues in the case
The case points to China's unprecedented growth and expansion on the world stage vis-a-vis business performance. Many observers expect China to become the economic superpower of the future replacing America in that role. China started off with supreme difficulties and it was only in the post-Deng period that it has overcome its challenges. Problems that it faces however exist in conjunction with its political and democratic system. The question of whether these elements will or will not impede China from achieving world dominance is one that occupies many observers.
China is more than 10,000 years old. During much of that time, it has lived in tumultuous change and poverty with effective reform only occurring in the post-1980s. Since then, it has reduced the number of its citizens living in poverty by over 200 million people as well as achieving a sevenfold increase in per capita income from 1979 to 2006. In 2008, China became the third largest economy in the world with a GDP that accounted fro 6% of its global total. It also became a leading recipient of foreign direct investment attracting approximately $92.4 billion in that same year.
On the other hand, China has an incommensurably aging population that will compel it o quadruple its GFP by 2020. Being oen of the most populous nations in the world, China will also be faced with the challenge of having to create 100 million jobs by 2013 and will have to improve its living...
These challenges are aggravated by their slowdown that they experienced in the recent 2009 recession. Although their experiences have been better than most other developed countries, China's economic potential and situation may be aggravated by their national policies.
Firstly, China is still a comparatively young country with a median age of 30, but it is one of the world's most rapidly again populations and due to its 'one child' policy has relatively fewer youngsters on its lower tier. By 2030, China will be expected to have more elderly dependents than children and with relatively few individuals being able to afford their own retirement and health care provisions, provision of health care and retirement benefits are growing concerns. This situation of the state is aggravated by the fact when the ailing system was resurrected in the 1990s; China was compelled to provide benefits to millions of people who were laid off from their jobs as a result.
Poverty is another challenge with as many as 130 million Chinese living below international subsistence levels. The gap in living standards is huge with urban citizens earning sometimes almost more than 4 times as much as those in villages. Protests may eventuate in political instability.
Gender discrimination (although not ethnic or racial) is another factor that riddles Chinese society. Whilst female scientists and engineers, for instance, constitute approximately one-third of China's technical workforce, they are…
