The political and environment risks of continued, rapid growth in India and China

China and India used to be lower industiralised, but now they are emerging as newly industrialised. The economic growth in these countries is more than any other in the world. India’s human and economic developments are bad for the country, but the consequences of the growth are good for the country. Whereas China’s growth is good for the country, but the consequences are bad for it.
Increased population from economic migration and potential job prospects help development, but also decreases human welfare for individuals due to lack of resources and sanitation and puts pressure on wages. There will be a reduction of poverty, proven by China overtaking India’s economic growth by 4.5% in 13 years.
Investment opportunities have increased, leading to more transnational companies or businesses, globalisation of trades and services and a high cultural influence. For example; the Pearl River Delta region in Hong Kong has been transformed into a business district of heavily urban buildings and money making companies. From a political standing, this could give China and India more of an influence of opinion in new policies and suggested strategies in all aspects of global management, but also cause it to become heavily dependent on core countries for investments. This increase in businesses has consequences like over exploitation of resources. This causes water scarcity, food chain and ecosystem disturbances and loss of biodiversity that is already under pressure from climate change. The hydrological cycle could be thrown out of its delicate balance and groundwater sources will deplete due to increased temperatures causing transpiration.
The millennium ecosystem assessment, formed by the United Nations aims for a sustainable world by 2015. The larger CO2 emissions make this aim harder and harder to achieve in the allotted time. The IPCC assess the anthropogenic factors that cause climate change and according to statistics, China and India are main contributors to CO2 emissions. The pollution in these countries is causing respiratory problems, disease and death. China has had 590,000 premature annual deaths due to urban air pollution, and India has had 460,000, according to figure 15, they are the two biggest contributors. The public that have experiences these deaths may think that their countries policies are inadequate or inefficient, causing political instability within the government to rethink their approaches.
Geopolitics is heavily linked to the risks of continuing growth. India and China compete for dwindling resources of energy and water due to the increased demand and population change. Price wars for gas and oil causes the market to increase and prices sky-rocket, and OPEC struggle to ensure the stabilization of oil markets in order to secure an efficient, economic and regular supply of oil to consumers.
The Director of National Intelligence (DNI) advices the US president about national and global intelligence which influences US foreign policy and came up with 4 scenarios about the future balance of world power. One of the most statistically likely to happen is the “BRIC’s bust-up” which explains that there will be an increase in conflicts between powers over resources and the countries containing the resources will have more control as other countries become dependent on them.
In conclusion, weighing up the benefits with the impacts of economic and political growth, the risks are too high to stop growth and focus on the environment all the time or the country will lose their global influence. I think that governments will take the environment into account, but will not sacrifice their economy for sustainable resources and development.

Japan's Unfair Trade Is Disturbing

The recent report by our Commerce Department indicating a huge negative foreign-trade imbalance with Japan and China should be very disturbing to our administration and Congress. While Japan's negative balance is twice as large as China's, all of the pressure by our trade negotiator, Mickey Kanter, appears to be on China.
Have we capitulated to the Japanese, convinced that we cannot make it open its markets to us and level the economic playing field? Our most capable negotiators have asked them to open their markets to American factories, farm products, insurance and engineering companies, etc., but to no avail. Yet China, with a potential consumer market of more than a billion people for our export, was threatened with a penalty, averted on the last day.
This is not to say that China should be allowed to continue it's copyright and patent dishonesty. But why have we allowed Japan, with a much smaller consumer potential market, to laugh all the way to the bank with a $65 billion trade surplus by finding devious ways to stonewall our negotiators?
Is our government afraid that the Japanese will dump the golf courses, hotels, farmland, and key real estate on a soft real-estate market? We are concerned that they will close some of their automobile factories in their most lucrative market? Or that they may dump their huge holdings of U.S. treasury bills on Wall Street?
Not likely. With their own soft economy and the American dollar at its lowest rate of exchange with the yen, there is no chance that the Japanese would risk such losses on its investments. Its farmers protest the purchase of American farm products. Our automobiles are overpriced on showroom floors, as are all American-made products. Our construction and engineering companies are not allowed to bid on government contracts. And yet our markets are wide open.
The difference appears to be that China threatened retaliation and Japan gives us a toothy smile and sends our negotiators home with promises. Their files and trash cans must be filled with negotiating contracts and deals that never are signed and delivered to Washington.