There is an urgent need to move at least parts of the manufacturing industry out of China to new manufacturing centres in other parts of the world, including India, to avoid the type of disruptions that were witnessed following the Coronavirus outbreak in that country. However, any efforts in this direction would succeed only with the active participation of the Chinese entrepreneurs. In other words, it is imperative that well experienced Chinese companies are encouraged to participate not only in setting up fully owned or joint venture manufacturing centres in countries, like India where manpower is still cheap, but also in moving vital supply/value chains, at least in smaller scales, near such newly established manufacturing centres.
COVID-19, the new coronavirus disease, is spreading across the globe with unprecedented speed, traversing man-made boundaries and walls erected to protect national territories. The pandemic is impacting every sphere of our lives as countries across the globe are gearing up to face economic slowdowns, if not deep recessions. No economist who has got any number is willing to predict with reasonable certainty as to what will be the shape of things we will be looking at after a couple of months. Even as country after country is shutting boundaries, analysts have come up with a variety of arguments on the future of the global economic health, some extreme and the others moderate. But everyone seems to agree, for different reasons though, that the concept of globalisation will undergo a critical stress test once the virus spread is brought under control and the convalescent governments across the globe start looking at economic rejuvenation prognostications.
Views expressed are personal and need not reflect or represent the views of Centre for Public Policy Research.
Muraleedharan Nair is Senior Fellows at CPPR. He has held various positions in the Government, in India and abroad. Besides publishing research papers in various books and journals, he writes commentaries in newspapers and magazines regularly. He also participates in conferences, seminars and panel discussions on strategic affairs at different universities, think-tanks, TV channels, All India Radio, etc. A Distinguished Senior Fellow with Defence Research and Studies, he speaks Urdu and Chinese. He can be contacted at [email protected]
1 Comment
A very well written article