CONFERENCE: 2013 UWA Workshop on the Chinese Economy

Australia’s extraordinary economic strength through the “great recession” has been sustained primarily by the spectacular rise of the Chinese economy and its demand for resource base imports. Future prospects for the two economies are therefore interlinked. Recent concern that the Chinese economy could slow down significantly or even stagnate in the near future is therefore of considerable importance in both economies. The oft-cited reasons for this include rising costs as local environmental costs increase and the supply of surplus rural labour wanes, the expectation that China’s overall labour force will soon begin to contract, placing further upward pressure on costs and resistance to China’s export expansion in stagnating European and North American markets.

The response of China’s government has been to change the source of its future growth to that which has underlain most global growth in the last two decades; namely its own economy. It has decided to “look inward” for further growth. Yet this is known to be more difficult politically; and moreover, because it requires major improvements in productivity in services, the skill composition of China’s labour force will require a major upgrade to achieve it. The Chinese economy and government has surmounted greater obstacles in recent decades but these are daunting and they have implications not only for China’s economic performance but also for the global economy and that of Australia in particular.

The UWA Business School’s research group on the Chinese economy is undertaking research on elements of these key issues that includes global and national modeling to help understand how alternative growth scenarios for China, and the numerous looming roadblocks to this growth, will affect the international economy and the performance of China’s trading partners.

At the workshop participants present draft research papers for detailed discussion with a view to polishing for submission to a high-ranking academic journal. Each participant will both present one paper and be a discussant on another.