China International Business and Economic Law (CIBEL) Centre hosted the CIBEL Lunch Seminar "Is Australia’s economy too dependent on China?" given by Professor James Laurenceson on 27th September 2019.
Abstract
With China now buying one-third of Australia’s exports – $150 billion, or more than seven percent of GDP – have we become “too dependent’ on China? Can Australia manage this dependence by increasing sales to alternative markets such as India?
This presentation highlighted the realities of international economic complementarities and purchasing power mean that many Australian industries will need to deal with more exposure to China, not less. This raises three distinct risks – the fallout from a Chinese economic “hard-landing”, the knock-on effects of consumption-driven Chinese growth for Australia’s resources exports and the Chinese government using trade as a tool of coercion. An investigation into the likelihood and magnitude of these risks shows them to be real but frequently overstated. That said, the implications at lower levels of aggregation, such as for individual firms, are likely to be far greater than for the country as a whole.
Speaker's bio
Professor James Laurenceson is an economist and Acting Director of the Australia-China Relations Institute at UTS.
He has previously held appointments at the University of Queensland (Australia), Shandong University (China) and Shimonoseki City University (Japan). He was President of the Chinese Economics Society of Australia from 2012-2014.
His academic research has been published in leading scholarly journals including China Economic Review and China Economic Journal.
Professor Laurenceson also provides regular commentary on contemporary developments in China’s economy and the Australia-China economic relationship. His opinion pieces have appeared in the Australian Financial Review, The Australian, Sydney Morning Herald, South China Morning Post, amongst others.