China in the media, 6
Today's globe featured some interesting China stories. The first two are both off the AP wire, and focus on the familiar topics of markets and economics.
First we have a story reporting on the rise in patent filings from Asian countries. China is singled out as having greatly increased applications for patents. This evidence is used to confirm the hypothesis that there are indeed "shifting patterns of innovation around the world." The article's characterization of "Asian" countries is interesting. It sets up an us and them, East and West, Occident and Orient binary relationship. If one believes the article, 'we' are losing ground to 'them.'
Next is a very interesting story which turns many common assumptions about the Chinese market on their head. It reports that China is losing its international competitive advantage, resulting in a flood of imports from other countries onto China's market. In addition, increasing numbers of manufacturing jobs are leaving China for more competitive (read cheaper) countries. These observations are interesting in that they run corollary to observations in the West about China's impact on our own markets. While these observations are interesting, they still dwell on China as an economic entity. If one were to come to his or her views of China purely from Globe and Mail reportage those views would be highly skewed and not representative of China's real complexities.
Today's third story maintains the focus on China's domestic market. This more in depth piece written by Jason Shubler for Reuters, reports on the PRC's new subsidy program to encourage rural residents to buy consumer durables. The article focuses on the disparity between rural and urban residents in China and how the state is utilizing new rebates to both diminish this gap and increase domestic consumption to off-set the threat to exports. I feel like a broken record, but again we have stories which are interesting in their own right, but focus on a very narrow range of topics pertaining to China. The reasons for this level of tunnel vision in the Globe's China coverage will be explored in coming posts.