China's economy is at a crossroads. As 2013 begins, foreign and domestic observers alike are asking which path the country's economic development should take in the next decade. How can China ensure stable and sustainable growth in the face of significant internal and external challenges, including slowing medium- and long-term growth, rising labor costs, and growing inflationary pressures?
Each year in January the World Economic Forum brings together leaders from business, government, academia and the media at its headquarters in Davos, Switzerland, for five days of lectures and discussions about issues of global importance.
US President Barack Obama began his second term on Sunday, with daunting tasks facing him both at home and abroad. Some believe Obama, now more confident, may be emboldened to take a harder line on foreign policies. However, when it comes to Sino-US relations, caution and a win-win strategy would be more pertinent.
China's exceptional GDP growth, 11.4 percent in 2007, is now a thing of the past, and the country must tap its technological potential if it is to maintain stable growth in the coming decades.
The politicization of central banking continues unabated. The resurrection of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Japan's Liberal Democratic Party, pillars of the political system that has left the Japanese economy mired in two lost decades and counting, is just the latest case in point.
Doha has never been hospitable for contentious North-South dialogue. The negotiations on climate change that signed off in the Qatari capital in December 2012 have proved that again. And, of course, it is difficult to forget that the negotiations on trade liberalization held under the auspices of the World Trade Organization in Doha remain deadlocked even after about a decade.
With China's economic growth slowing, more "dividends of reform" are desperately needed to boost sustainable development and extend to everybody the benefits of national economic development.
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