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China Ranks Fourth In the World for Capital Out-flow Foreign Investment Cannot Keep Pace Tian Liang
(Clearwisdom.net) According to KaiFang Magazine, 36.474 billion US
dollars went abroad from China in 1997. By the year 2000, the amount has
increased to 48.0 billion. However, in the same period, foreign investment in
China was only 40.7 billion. Thus China ranks as the country with the fourth
highest capital out-flow, behind only Venezuela, Mexico, and Argentina.
Furthermore, the out-going capital was not being used for investment purposes,
but for purposes like passive bank deposits, family members' emigration,
children's tuition studying abroad, and housing expenses. The chief reason
behind it is that the capital was obtained illicitly in the first place. Since the people holding the money could not convert it into working capital,
they paid attention only to short-term consumption rather than long-term
investment. Therefore, China's economy is tracing the steps of Portugal and
Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, squandering huge sums of money
in consumption and not converting it into business capital. The inevitable
result is the fate of Portugal and Spain, which soon declined after a short
spell of prosperity. In a country under the tyranny of a dictatorship, regardless of what measures
of censorship and media control the government adopts, the facts still remain
the facts. In such a country, there is no meaningful legal system to speak of,
nor would there be social stability. Posting date: 2/16/2002 |