Reuters (November 16)
“China’s factory output and retail sales grew at their weakest pace in over a year in October, piling pressure on policymakers to revamp the $19 trillion export-driven economy as mounting supply and demand strains threaten to further curtail growth.” Officials may be running out of options to keep “the world’s second-largest economy humming…. even an economy of China’s size can only squeeze so much growth from building more industrial parks, power substations and dams.”
Tags: China, Dams, Demand, Economy, Export-driven, Factory output, Industrial parks, October, Officials, Policymakers, Retail sales, Substations, Supply, Weakest
The Economist (October 12)
“China is dangerously short of water. While the south is a lush, lake-filled region, the north—which has half the population and most of the farmland—is more like a desert.” To try to solve the problem, China has now “built as many large dams as the rest of the world put together.” To really solve the problem, however, China will need to focus on regulatory issues, such as cracking down on polluters, and economic incentives, such as increasing water rates to encourage conservation.
Tags: China, Conservation, Dams, Desert, Economics, Farmland, Polluters, Population, Regulation, Water
