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ex. 10 p. 8-12
The " dot-com bubble " (or sometimes " IT bubble "[1] or " TMT bubble ") was a speculative bubble covering roughly 1995–2000 (with a climax on March 10, 2000 with the NASDAQ peaking at 5132.52 in intraday trading before closing at 5048.62) during which stock markets in industrialized nations saw their equity value rise rapidly from growth in the more recentInternet sector
and related fields. While the latter part was a boom and bust cycle, the Internet boom sometimes is meant to refer to the steady commercial growth of the Internet with the advent of the world wide web as exemplified by the first release of the Mosaic web browser in 1993 and continuing through the 1990s.The period was marked by the founding (and, in many cases, spectacular failure) of a group of new Internet-based companies commonly referred to as dot-coms. Companies were seeing their stock prices shoot up if they simply added an "e-" prefix to their name and/or a ".com" to the end, which one author called "prefix investing."[2]
A combination of rapidly increasing stock prices, market confidence that the companies would turn future profits, individual speculation in stocks, and widely available venture capitalcreated an environment in which many investors were willing to overlook traditional metrics such as P/E ratio in favor of confidence in technological advancements.
As far as the word streak is concerned, I would advise to try to memorise the sense the word comes up with in the Module, i.e. a part of someone’s character, or a type of behaviour that is different from the rest of their character. But I’d like to draw your attention to a number of idiomatic expressions with streak worth remembering.
1. losing/winning streak = a series of losses/wins, in sports, for instance (Typically: be on ~; have ~; continue one's ~.) The team was on a losing streak that started nearly three years ago.
2. streak of good/bad luck = a series of fortunate events/events that are only bad luck After a series of failures, we started out on a streak of good luck.
3. to have a yellow belly OR to have a yellow streak down one’s back = to be cowardly Tim's got a yellow streak down his back a mile wide. Get rid of that yellow streak. Show some courage.
In the aftermath of the financial crisis everyone was putting a lot more emphasis on the G2 – the joining of America and China – to come together to chart strategic and economic courses for the rest of the world
China’s also been since the financial crisis a major and influential member of the G20, a grouping of many countries around the world.
But more than that Chinese companies have used this period to get bigger and stronger and to go around the world acquiring technology and resources as they need from the countries around the world
Exports to China from developing countries – China is paying a lot of money for their products. What is China’s strategy?
The interesting thing about the post-crisis world, from China’s perspective, has been the way that China’s perception has shifted and, in my view, has shifted quite dramatically. China used to look at the West, Europe and America in the main, as places where it would export its products and enrich China through an export-led growth model. Now China is shifting towards the developing world to places like Latin America, Africa, former Soviet Central Asia, south east Asia and even Russia.
Crisis of confidence inspired by the financial crisis? We can’t trust the West anymore to buy our stuff.
It’s partly through design, and partly through geological accident that many of the things China needs, the base metals and the oil, tend to be located in these developing countries around the world. But the design side of it is perhaps more interesting. In my view, the financial crisis created a real crisis of confidence within China, particularly, about the reliability of the United States to be the buyer of last resort as it were, the main market for Chinese goods. And therefore the insecurity that that bred within China made the leaders of China think ‘We need to try to redirect our …, to re-orientate ourselves, to emphasize the developing world so that we can export more reliably and invest more reliably too.
A lot of Chinese largest companies are benefiting from the shift. We’ve got a chart here that shows that four of the world’s twelve largest companies by market value … China Construction Bank, PetroChinaChina Mobile but they are fundamentally different from the likes of Apple and Microsoft. These are not entrepreneurial creations.
These are mostly children of the semi-monopolistic market controlled by the Communist Party in Beijing. These are children of the state, they are all state-owned companies and they all operate within preferential home markets. But now what’s beginning to happen is that they are having a mess there … become incredibly wealthy and powerful companies. They’re going abroad and acquiring other companies all over the world. The Chinese are not ready yet to give up Europe or America, of course, as major markets. But the real action is not there – that’s the old story. The real action is the new story which is the re-orientation of China’s commercial relationships to the developing world. And PetroChina is massively active in Latin America, for example, also in Africa. We just saw them also active this week in Scotland.
Are they independent actors when PetroChina say ‘I want to buy this Scottish refinery’? Is that a corporate objective or is that a state objective?
It’s a delicate mix of the two. All these Chinese companies are ultimately responsible to the Communist Party. They are all controlled by the ranking officials within the communist party but they balance the political and the commercial agenda.
Chinese worker in Angola which is the second oil supplier to China … after Saudi Arabia. Is this inevitable that those Chinese warships of the east coast of Africa are gonna make their way many-many hundreds of years after Vasco de Gama around the Cape of Good Hope and start patrolling waters of Angola where they have as much interest as the US does in the Persian Gulf.
As China spreads its influence around the world and its commercial influence embeds itself deeper into places like Africa and Latin America, South East Asia etc the things that it sources from those areas – the oil, the base metals and other resources – need a stable and secure supply route back to China and that places a huge emphasis within China on the building up of a blue water navy
Tension/friction with the US
Attempts to encircle China in Asia – in other way to create civil and military allies in countries around China to try to contain or to prepare for a scenario in which China and America are less friendly with each other and there is real tension over those crucial shipping routes back to China.
G2 and G20
Shift in perspective. Crisis of confidence?
A delicate mix of the two
Secure supply route
Last year China and Japan squabbled very badly over the Senkaku Islands and you called this a shock comparable with the Nixon shock of 1971 when the US reestablished relations with China behind Japan’s back. Why was the last year such a seminal moment?
First of all, from Japanese point of view, the way that China acted was very much shocking, ruthless. We have certainly known that Chinese are very much critical on the Japanese … on history issues but we have never known that Chinese are being so much ruthless on this. I know that in 1971 when we were exposed to Nixon shock Japan was on the rise. But Japan has been in decline and people felt very much vulnerable. And then China is contrary on the rise. I think that is the reason why Japanese people are so shaken.
What did China do that was so shocking?
This is not only about China’s intrusion to the Japanese waters but also China actually de facto banned its export of rare earth metals to Japan. This is perceived as punishment. It’s not only the maritime issues but that encompasses other fields too.
But Den Xiaoping advised China to hide its light and to rise peacefully and in a sense quietly and that policy appears to be coming to an end. Why? And what kind of foreign policy do you see replacing.
I don’t think Chinese have found the answer yet. They appear to be no longer satisfied with Den Xiaoping’s ‘low profile’ policy, peaceful rise strategy but at the same time they appear to be unable to find new … mission to replace that.
The international system has served China very well in the sense it had ridden on the free market arrangement. Why is China beginning to rock the boat?
I think they perhaps they seem to be more confident of their economic wealth and development and now replacing Japan as number two world economy. So that may be one factor. Another reason is that perhaps they are feeling more vulnerable in terms of resources, maritime safety, perhaps North Korean issues. So they perhaps tend to overreact to defend their interests.
Do you think the long-term strategy of China is to squeeze the US out of the Pacific or at least to limit its role in the Pacific which after the war was very big all embracing?
There may be different views among the Chinese players. But basically I think China still knows they can coexist with the US particularly in the field of the economy and trade. But in the realm of the security issues, I think, that if China feels vulnerable on the maritime issues and then being driven to develop the naval power … projecting the naval power then it could really be in conflict with the existing international order which the US had laid the ground for.
Could there be a change in military posture by other Asian nations in the region?
We have seen already arms race particularly naval arms race in the past ten years. And it’s likely to continue. I think it could be extremely dangerous if we let this ‘rule of the jungle’ to continue. We really need to conceive and devise some way of maintaining that maritime security among the nations.
Can you talk a little bit more about China’ growing economic weight and how that might influence its foreign policy? For example, you mentioned the unofficial ban on rare earth exports China imposed after the Senkaku shock/dispute. Do you see China using its growing economic muscle to project a kind of a foreign policy … foreign power in the region?
I personally hope that China will not exert the newly acquired economic power to extract diplomatic concessions from the other countries as they seemed to do last year in ‘rare earth’ case. But perhaps China after all is becoming a more normal country and you know all big economic players are tempted to use their economic power to gain some diplomatic points. And you cannot rule out the possibility … you cannot expect China to be an exception.
Just on the renminbi. How has Japan reacted to China’s early stage efforts to internationalize the renminbi?
I think that should be welcome if Chinese government really decide to internationalize the renminbi because it requires more transparency of the market, more integrity and neutrality of the market and that will help the other countries too because there is risk of … because of this murkiness about how the value of the currency is decided.
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