00:00Joining me now is Xiaobing Wang, Senior Lecturer in Chinese Economics at the University of Manchester.
00:06Thanks so much for your time. Those high-tech investment figures...
00:09Thank you very much for having me.
00:11It's a pleasure. High-tech investment in the first two months, up more than a fifth, over 20%.
00:16What's happening there?
00:19I think this is a sign of Chinese economic improvement to some extent.
00:24And at the moment, of course, the world economy is facing a large, big challenge
00:29and the Chinese economy also has a lot of challenges in terms of aging and in terms of economic slowdown.
00:37But overall, the Chinese economy performance is actually better than expected.
00:42Although in the past National Congress and the GDP target were set at 4.5, which was lower than before.
00:51But overall, its performance is still significantly higher than many other countries.
00:57In this turmoil in world.
01:00Yeah, absolutely. It's interesting if we look at the firms that are opening up in China.
01:05It's up by 14%, but the lower total foreign direct investment down 5.7%.
01:11Just put those two figures together and help us understand them.
01:16I think overall, FDI down was mainly because of the globalization trend in the world.
01:24For example, in the world at the moment, a lot of conflicts, a lot of trends that is not encouraging
01:31globalization.
01:32And this basically is a sign of trade protectionism, etc.
01:38But at the moment, the Chinese FDI is still up, especially during the first couple of months.
01:45And of course, this can be seen as a short-run trend, but also it reflects the sort of global
01:53downturn of globalization.
01:55But overall, it has a very good sign of showing the Chinese economy is going healthy.
02:01I wonder if you can give us some insight into what foreign firms are thinking of China.
02:07Do they still see it as a sort of that traditional model of a manufacturing hub?
02:12Or are they increasingly seeing it as a consumer and services market?
02:17I think increasingly, they are seeing China as a consumer market, not only just a manufacturer hub.
02:26I mean, of course, manufacturer, it still plays a very significant role in Chinese FDI at the moment.
02:32For example, because China still have a very large savings rate and also very large surplus labor.
02:39And relatively speaking, labor market is still very flexible in China, which is advantage of the Chinese manufacturer.
02:48But on top of that, not only just produce for the world, but also China now become a consumer society.
02:55And in this case, it will be very good for the other companies to not only just produce in China,
03:03but also to sell their products in China.
03:06For example, iPhone and many high-end products can sell very well in China.
03:12And this is basically in line with what we want to push for China to be a consumer society.
03:19Thank you so much for chatting to us.
03:21That's Xiaobing Wang, senior lecturer in Chinese economics, the University of Manchester.
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