? ?
Opinion / You Nuo
Changing face of economic growth
By You Nuo (China Daily)
Updated: 2007-08-13 06:44
I was recently reading Peter Drucker during my daily commutes (which, in
Beijing, can be very long sometimes) and before I went to bed.
The book, Management Challenges for the 21st Century, was one of the last
few he published and deals with management issues.
Putting things in the future perspective was what Drucker was good at.
But it was also surprising to me to realize how fast the world has
changed and how many new things have come up since the book was published
in 1999 and its author died in 2005.
When Drucker was talking about the future, he said there were only a few
things that could be regarded as certainties, and none of them was a pure
business factor that people making corporate strategies were prepared to
consider.
For instance, he said, to a large extent, future economic growth would be
driven mainly by non-economic forces, primarily government, healthcare,
education and leisure.
As a result, many industries, especially those belonging to the
traditional manufacturing, would lose their importance and most of their
products would find flattened demand.
This was a brilliant point. But if the author was writing the same book
today, he would highlight one more non-economic force, namely the
environment, and write a whole new chapter about its business
implications.
One implication we can already see is the changing nature of agriculture.
In the past couple of years, both as a victim of the changing climate,
adverse weather conditions here and there, and as a provider of the
substitute for fossil energy, agriculture and related operations, such as
forestry, have gained a lot more influence on our daily life than before.
In fact, traditional energy and food (actually farm products as new
energy resources) have been the two most important factors to threaten us
with a new round of inflation.
Not only traditional agriculture, but also the planting of some
previously unknown oil-bearing shrubs and fruits are becoming industries
to earn increasing capital input from the urban centers.
My meeting last week with a friend of a friend - a spontaneous
interpreter-turned private entrepreneur who now runs an oil-bearing
forest farm of more than 50,000 hectares in the back valleys of West
China's Shaanxi Province - is a perfect example.
He told me he was preparing a trip to buy some mobile bio-diesel
extractors from the United States.
It is hard to tell how long the trend of food price rises will continue.
But one can already be confident enough to say both the importance of
agriculture and people's expectation of it will change for ever.
In addition to its environmental significance, there is also a crucial
link between agriculture and healthcare, or the rising health concerns in
the world.
Since there is still no telling when government-run healthcare systems
can provide the kind insurance people look for, they have to learn to
take better care of themselves by being smarter consumers, especially
when they shop for groceries.
Soon enough, the production of high-standard foods - grown with
chemical-free techniques, and protected by bio-pesticides - will develop
into a new industry as the necessary first link in man's food supply
chain. So much more will still have to change.
E-mail: younuo@chinadaily.com.cn
(China Daily 08/13/2007 page4)
Hot Talks
* Should Beida recruit more recommended students?
* Nude women and Peking Opera: pornography or art?
* War in Iraq lost?
* Costa Rica cut ties with Taiwan: Who's next?
* Will China follow USA "way of life"?
Most Commented/Read Stories in 48 Hours
Learn Chinese, Chinese Online Class, Learning Materials, Mandarin audio lessons, Chinese writing lessons, Chinese vocabulary lists, About chinese characters, News in Chinese, Go to China, Travel to China, Study in China, Teach in China, Dictionaries, Learn Chinese Painting, Your name in Chinese, Chinese calligraphy, Chinese songs, Chinese proverbs, Chinese poetry, Chinese tattoo, Beijing 2008 Olympics, Mandarin Phrasebook, Chinese editor, Pinyin editor, China Travel, Travel to Beijing, Travel to Tibet
No comments:
Post a Comment