China - Overheating?

Here's the latest news from China. We had better pay attention!

China's 3rd-Qtr GDP Grows 9.1%, Faster Than Expected

--- China's economic growth accelerated to 9.1 percent in the third quarter, driven by increased investment as Sony Corp. built factories and China United Telecommunications Corp. expanded its network to meet demand.

The rate was higher than the 6.7 percent reported in the second quarter and the 8.7 percent median forecast of five economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. Growth for the full year will probably be about 8.5 percent, the pace achieved in the first nine months, National Bureau of Statistics Deputy Director Qiu Xiaohua, said at a press briefing in Beijing.

China's economy, the sixth largest in the world, is growing more than twice as fast as the five biggest -- the U.S., Japan, Germany, the UK and France. Including Hong Kong, China is now the top export destination for South Korea and Taiwan and one of the three biggest overseas markets for Japan, Thailand and Singapore.

``China is really the engine that drives the entire region,'' Ford Motor Co. Chief Executive Officer William Clay Ford Jr. said at a separate briefing in the Chinese capital. ``We do expect to expand aggressively in China.''

Ford, the world's No. 2 carmaker, today said it plans to spend as much as $1.5 billion boosting production at its plant in the city of Chongqing, southwestern China. The company, keen to grab a bigger slice of the world's fastest-growing auto market, said it will add a second factory and an engine-making plant.

Investment

Sony, the world's second-biggest consumer electronics maker, said it has invested $8 billion so far in China and predicts the country will become its No. 2 market -- behind the U.S. -- within five years. China Unicom, the nation's No. 2 mobile-phone-service provider, ordered a $139 million code- division-multiple-access network from Nortel Networks Corp. in the third quarter.

Fixed-asset investment, which includes foreign direct investment and accounts for about a third of China's economy, rose 31 percent in the first nine months of this year as companies such as Sony invested in new plant and machinery, and the government built roads, bridges and dams. That's helping to create jobs and boost incomes in the world's most populous nation.

The government said 6.25 million jobs were created in the first nine months and the official urban jobless rate at end- September was 4.2 percent. The average disposable income in towns and cities -- home to two-fifths of China's 1.3 billion people -- rose 9 percent to 6,347 yuan ($767) in the first nine months of this year, the statistics bureau said today.

Cheap Labor

Even as incomes climb, Chinese wages are among the lowest in the world. The hourly pay for a Chinese manufacturing worker is 61 cents rather than the $16.14 paid in the U.S., according to a study by economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.

Cheap labor is helping convince Sony, Siemens AG and other overseas companies to choose China as a hub for their operations. Siemens, the world's biggest engineering company, has invested more than $700 million in the 40 units it has in China. Chief Executive Officer Heinrich von Pierer, in an interview Monday with Der Spiegel magazine, said he could hire 12,000 Chinese software programmers for the cost of 2,000 German ones.

Foreign direct investment into China rose 12 percent to $40.2 billion in the first nine months of this year. This directly accounts for about 5 percent of the nation's gross domestic product and the factories built with these funds produce half China's exports.

Overseas sales, which make up about 30 percent of the economy, increased 30 percent in the third quarter and factory production rose 32 percent. Retail sales, which account for more than two-fifths of the economy, rose about a 10th. {Article Continued}