Principles of Economics - Essay Example

For example, this figure is equivalent to 9% of the German and 8% of the United States’ per capita GDP. Furthermore, in terms of nature of resources, China has somewhat a small holds of resources based on per capita criteria, which is not even comparable to a developed country of a modest character. These facts reveal the extent of the economic gap between China and the developed countries, which sets it trailing behind (Wolf, 2005). To sustain the country on an economic growth path, the Chinese Government has the responsibility of making significant policy adjustments.

These policies should be aimed at transitioning the country from middle-income to high-income status. This includes finding measures to address the social and environment imbalances, improving the access to healthcare and education, setting targets to reduce pollution, expanding social protection, and increasing the country’s energy efficiency (Wolf, 2005). The government should also make efforts to discover a new road to industrialization, and modify the approach of economic development by developing a circular economy, changing the industrial structure, improving the traditional industries and supporting the strategic and emerging industries.

The government of China should also promote use of information technology to support industrialization, which in turn can spur the country’s competitive advantage especially in respect to its expansive manufacturing industry. It would also be extremely important for the government of China to continue focusing on its regional development strategies, including turning around the tendency of widening regional economic gap such as supporting the development of the western regions. The idea of supporting development on certain priority zones can be achieved by setting the national spatial development in an orderly and coordinated manner, which should also include coordinating between urban and rural areas development (Sun, 2003).

Question 2 When we say that we are engaged in a ‘global economy’, we mean that we are engaged in economic activities that are beyond a particular country’s borders. This includes a situation where international corporations stop relying on production within the mother country and extend their activities to many countries around the world. The global economy is concerned with globalization of production in areas such as finance, markets, labor force and communications (Ernst & Ozawa, 2002).

When we talk of free trade, we are referring to a situation where the government of a certain nation eliminates all the artificial barriers to trade, which are usually established to protect the domestic producers from competition from the international market, particularly originating from the trading nations. Free trade is known to increase production because nations are given an opportunity to concentrate in production of those products that they have a competitive advantage. This enables countries to enjoy efficiencies that come from increased output and economies of scale.

Free trade also promotes the efficiency of resource allocation hence spurring production efficiency. This is because individual countries are able to exercise efficient use of resources, which potentially results to higher output (Ernst & Ozawa, 2002). On the other hand, despite the many benefits, there a number of disadvantages associated with free trade. This includes creation of structural unemployment as a result of removal of trade