When people around the world are rejoicing at worldwide efforts to tide over the financial crisis, Dubai, a luxury city built in desert, has reportedly bogged down into a debt crisis, and is almost seting off a hurricane across global financial and capital markets. Numerous capital markets in the Middle East region and beyond have been implicated, and a host of global investors are suffering losses to a varying extent.
Judging from the current situation, the Dubai debt crisis has a limited extent and impact and, with regard to global economic recovery, it is only an "aftershock" at best in the ongoing economic recovery process, and its influence on global financial crisis will also be short-lived. Dubai is not the Wall Street after all, but both lessons and viewpoints on revelation from the debt crisis have provided for people are really prfound and penetrating.
First of all, economic construction should be carried out in compliance with a nation's capacity instead of outreaching itself to rely on large-scale money borrowing. With an objective of establishing the Middle East logistics, leisure and financial hub, the government of Dubai has promoted 300 billion US dollar-scale construction projects over the past four years with an ambitious scheme of turning the city into a world class tourist and financial center. In this process, the Dubai city government and enterprises raised funds via global bond markets, and the amount of debts of the government and state-owned firms has expanded like snowballing. To date, the size of open debts has come to 59 billion US dollars, far beyond its ability to repay. So, the economic bubbles could burst sooner or later.
To date, a few places or regions in China have likewise engaged in large-scale development and construction through the issuing of loans on a big scale, and so the Dubai debt crisis should be served as a precaution or warning.
Second, economic development cannot be driven or pulled by the over-reliance on the real estate industry. Although the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is the world's leading oil producer, Dubai's oil resources, however, would be depleted by 2010. In this contest, it has to shift to the real estate and tourism-related economic development. Out of a population of merely about 1.2 million, people coming from overseas account for 85 percent of Dubai's total population. The demand of local people for housing estate is quite limited nevertheless. So, most real properties are for foreigners to buy, and so the non-rigid demand for the real estate sector is vulnerable.
Previously, tropical Hainan island province and the coastal city of Beihai in southern Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region, both in south China, have also once experienced property bubbles, similar to those occurring in Dubai. People in some places around China still do not learn lessons. Hence, it is imperative for the Chinese government at various levels to beware of problems inflicted by the over-reliance on the property sector, so as to readjust production mix promptly and to retain healthy economic growth.
Third, monetary policy should be geared to inflation, asset price, debt build-up and global capital flows. The depreciation of U.S. dollar in Dubai over the past two years has had the biggest impact on the purchasing parity of the UAE dirham against other currencies owing to its direct peg against the U.S. dollar. This has given rise to the price increase and bring double-digit inflation to virtually all the Gulf States.
Maintaining the basic stability of the exchange rate of the Renminbi (RMB) could help regulate the influx of international hot money, control the asset price inflation and stem drastic fluctuations on capital market. So, all this is conducive not only to the sustainable development of Chinese economy but also to the steady world economic recovery.
By People's Daily Online and contributed by Shi Jianxun, an especially PD-invited guest commentator and a noted professor of the School of Economics and Management with elite Tongji University in Shanghai
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