Andrew Charlton Launches New Quarterly Essay: Dragon’s Tail
Formerly the senior economic advisor to Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, economist and authorAndrew Charlton has recently launched a new quarterly essay, Dragon’s Tail: The Lucky Country AfterChina’s Boom. This essay explores the recent meteoric economic rise of China, as well as the potential impact and benefits on Australia’s future.
China’s rise, as Andrew Charlton explains, is perhaps the single most significant economic happening in the last two centuries, one that occurred over 100 times more quickly, and on 1000 times the scale, of Britain’s Industrial Revolution. As Charlton explains, Australia has been an important, if not essential, part of this rise, primarily due to the extent of raw materials the country has fed to China’s explosive manufacturing of everything from automobiles, trucks and railways to office towers and apartment buildings.
The sheer magnitude of China’s appetite for natural resources has helped to make Australia wealthier than ever before in the country’s history, says Charlton, though it has also had a significant drain of the competitiveness of many aspects of the Australian economy, leading to considerable vulnerabilities. Andrew Charlton uses Dragon’s Tail to show how China, currently the most populous economy, is facing a challenging transition, one that could have potentially far-reaching consequences for Australia and the Australian economy. Charlton examines ways Australia can revitalize its economy and maintain its prosperity on the face of an ever-changing world. “Understanding China’s growth model helps explain why Australia has done so well in the twenty-first century. But it also explains why, at the same time, our economic anxiety is reaching a zenith: why Holden is leaving, why the budget is in such an apparent quagmire, why house prices are soaring, why the dollar is so volatile. China’s growth has brought us a windfall, but it is a precarious sort of prosperity.”