China Passes U.S. as World's Biggest Energy Consumer, IEA Sa

[BoyRacer]

China Passes U.S. as World’s Biggest Energy Consumer, IEA Says → bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-1 … -says.html

China overtook the U.S. as the world’s biggest energy user last year, emphasizing that developing nations are driving global growth, according to the International Energy Agency.

China consumed 2,252 million metric tons of oil equivalent in 2009 in the form of crude, coal, natural gas, nuclear power and renewable sources, IEA Chief Economist Fatih Birol said yesterday. That exceeded the 2,170 million tons used by the U.S.

“It’s one of those major turning points,” Tilak Doshi, the chief economist at the Energy Studies Institute at the National University of Singapore, said in a phone interview. “China is growing by leaps and bounds. You’ve got OECD countries where you’re talking about oil demand peaking, meanwhile the emerging countries like China and India will keep growing their energy demand.”

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[mr_anderson]

2 Questions :

1. If Chinas consumption keeps commodity prices high, how is the West supposed to get out of recession ?

2. With the West in recession, how long can Chinas growth continue ?

[John_Galt]

2 answers

1. print money/ game the system/ make new bubble

2. who knows, as long as the CCP can prop up the system

[BoyRacer]

The Harsh Reality behind China’s Growth Story → israelfinancialexpert.blogspot.c … rowth.html

Many people argue China has an amazing long term growth story, and that the fact that there might be a rough path ahead as economic conditions slow down doesn’t alter the fact that China will grow much faster than most emerging markets and all developed markets since it has a large population which has just discovered the wonders of capitalism and a very low GDP per capita.

But the harsh reality is that after decades of double digit GDP growth, average house hold income still trail miles behind many emerging economies. Furthermore, wealth disparity is accelerating at an alarming speed. In order to maintain certain level of GDP growth and employment rate, the Chinese government turned to a fix capital investment model, but that has sunk China into an economic black hole, and a vicious cycle where in order to maintain more GDP growth it needs to waste more resources and further increase the mal-investments in the economy. The waste of natural resources, human capital, and financial capital in China is staggering. The more China depends on fixed investment as a growth engine the more it will create wealth disparity, thus increasing the potential for social instability.

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