=China's Decade-Old Hunger for Resources Is Modest, vs Japan of 1950s, -60s

choi

Howard W French, The Hungry, Hungary Dragon; In Mongolia, fear of becoming dependent on Beijing led leaders to build national railroads using a different gauge from China's. Wall Street Journal, Feb 20, 2014
online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304626804579361093769636948
(book review on Elizabeth C Economy and Michael Levi, By All Means Necessary; How China's resource quest is changing the world. Oxford University Press, 2014)

Quote:

"For all the talk of Beijing locking up supplies, China's share of the world's oil, by historical standards, isn't especially remarkable. According to the authors, in other words, China's supposedly pending economic takeover of the world's resources is more hype than reality. * * * [They] range from commodity to commodity and sector to sector [to underlie their points] * * * the authors draw a useful analogy with another Asian giant: Japan. In the 1950s and '60s, that country posted growth rates similar to China's today. 'Japanese oil imports accounted for a considerably larger part of the world market than Chinese imports do today,' they write. 'Japan boosted its share of world steel production, the main source of demand for iron ore, from 6 percent in 1960 to 17 percent by 1973, nearly passing the United States, and spurring a demand for iron ore imports that greatly exceeded US demand.' And yet, they add, 'Australia did not become a Japanese mine,' as many at the time had darkly predicted. Matters with China will follow much the same pattern, Ms Economy and Mr Levi suggest.

"Talk of the country taking over big natural-resource players in Africa and elsewhere is mostly unfounded; China won't be governing countries like South Sudan merely because it has invested heavily there. For starters, there is little evidence that China seeks direct control over energy sources abroad. Far from developing captive sources, China's big state oil companies, for example, sell most of their supplies on the open market.

"In Central Asia, China has become a big player quickly, but it was late to a game still mostly played by Russian rules that govern the supply and transport of oil and gas.

"Arguably more important than all of this, the authors say, is the way China is often forced to bend to the reality of international markets. Once China surpassed Japan in steel production in the mid-2000s, for example, state planners pushed consolidation of the industry in order to maximize the country's market power. So far, this approach hasn't succeeded, as dozens of relatively small players in China continue to fight for survival, meaning that Japan, Korea and big European buyers play leading roles as market makers for long-term contracts.

Note: The surname Economy is "Americanized form of Greek Economos ‘steward’, or of the patronymic form Economou." (In other words, "Economous" in Greek means "son of Economos.")
(a) Etymology of Economos. Stanford University, undated.
www.stanford.edu/~economos/name.htm

Four consecutive paragraphs:

"Economos (English [transliteration])

"Oikonomou (Greek)    "Oi" in Greek is pronounced as a long E.

"Oikon (English = ēcon) means house in classical Greek. The original meaning of Oikonomou was a home owner.

"Oikonomou evolved from home owner to estate manager. Somebody who was responsible for all resources on the estate, a steward. Oikonomou was a medieval Eastern Roman title for somebody who was in charge of a project or institution. It is still used by the Greek Orthodox church. Hence the word economy means the management of resources. Since the proper management of resources would use the least amount, economy has also taken on the meaning of frugality.

(b) Oeconomus
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oeconomus
(Oeconomus, œconomus or oikonomos (Greek οἰκονόμος, from oiko- 'house' and -nomos 'rule, law') was an Ancient Greek word meaning 'manager' or 'housekeeper')