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本帖最后由 lilyma06 于 2011-11-29 09:05 编辑
Chinese Exports Show Trouble for Asian Economies By WAYNE ARNOLD and REYNOLDS HOLDINGPublished: November 27, 2011 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/28/business/chinese-exports-show-trouble-for-asian-economies.html
China’s manufacturing engine is sputtering, which bodes ill for other Asian exporters like Japan and South Korea. They’re counting on China to offset slowing demand from the United States and Europe. But much of what China imports goes into making its own exports. And even what bona fide domestic demand is left is likely to be affected by a trade slowdown.
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Nelson Ching/Bloomberg NewsA port area in Liaoning Province, China. The country's exports are slowing.
China’s exports show troubling signs. Annual growth in monthly exports has slowed from 34 percent a year ago, to 16 percent. Growth in China’s imports from the rest of Asia eased from 90 percent year on year in early 2010 to roughly 20 percent in October.
Asia’s exports to China started booming after China joined the World Trade Organization in 2002, as the country demanded components and machinery it couldn’t make. That made the rest of Asia a crucial part of China’s supply chain, but also made it more dependent on Chinese export demand.
How much is hard to tell. China’s exports of goods made from imported materials are equivalent to 40 percent of its imports. Assuming generously that half of the value of those exports has been added by Chinese workers, it means up to one-fifth of Asia’s exports to China are destined for global markets. Then there’s the export-related stuff that goes into China but doesn’t come out, like equipment and machinery.
Machinery and transport equipment, for example, accounts for roughly 40 percent of Korea’s exports to China.
The hope has been that China will consume an increasing share of its Asian imports at home. But domestic demand is unlikely to stand up to an export slowdown. Exports as a portion of gross domestic product have been falling since 2006, but only back to where they were in 2003. And even a small change in exports can influence consumption and investment habits.
The past offers a guide. During the 2008 crisis, China’s exports fell 25 percent, and its imports from Asia halved. Then, gross exports were equivalent to 35 percent of China’s G.D.P. They account for 29 percent now. It’s hard to see how Asian imports will hold up if China’s export engine stalls again.
‘No Harm, No Foul’
The legal concept of “no harm, no foul” is worth preserving. Privacy laws and other statutes enable consumers to sue companies without claiming actual injury. That only encourages dubious legal claims and upends constitutional logic. The Supreme Court gets a chance on Monday to start coming to the same conclusion.
The case involves a homeowner suing an insurance company, but the issue arises in dozens of contexts. Infringing copyrights, secretly tracking Web site visits or making prerecorded calls to cellphones can all prompt lawsuits, even without inflicting any obvious damage. That’s because a law prohibiting the behavior also creates a right to sue.
This seeming windfall for undamaged “victims” may help deter wrongdoing. But it flies in the face of the Constitution’s implicit requirement that litigants have, in effect, skin in the game and suffer a loss. Plenty of courts agree, especially in the privacy area.
In 2005, for example, a federal court said JetBlue passengers couldn’t sue the airline for violating its own privacy policy by passing their names to the government because they could not prove damage. Suits against Disney, Microsoft and McDonald’s for snooping on Web sites with electronic cookies failed for similar reasons. And this month, LinkedIn customers lost a challenge against the company for leaking their user IDs, again because they also could not show that they had any losses as a result of the breach.
In the case now before the Supreme Court, however, a homeowner was allowed to file a class-action suit against her title insurer after it was accused of paying kickbacks to get business. She didn’t complain about high prices or bad service, but merely the violation of her right to a graft-free transaction.
Real injuries can be hard to detect. Illegal payoffs may create conflicts of interest that skew deals in hidden ways. Allowing suits without clear damages, however, also invites the infliction of serious and undue harm.
Risk-taking industries like technology inevitably make mistakes that need to be promptly fixed. But punishing companies with dubious class-action litigation smacks of overkill. The Constitution strikes a useful balance, as the Supreme Court would do well to remind everyone concerned.
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发表于 2011-11-29 08:53
发表于 2011-11-29 09:29