Yale Club of Hong Kong is partnering with Our Hong Foundation a webinar with Professor Stephen Roach on the important issues facing governments as they attempt to deal with COVID-19. Issues he will discuss include the following:
- As governments contemplate or implement the exiting of Covid-19 lockdowns and the reopening of stalled economies, an early stage of asymmetrical normalization is observed; as in the case of China, kickstarting production is found to be easier than boosting consumer demand, especially the revival of face-to-face services (such as restaurants and retail shopping) amid fears of a coronavirus resurgence.
- Q1 of 2020 was marked with global shortages of medical gears and related supplies to cope with the fallout of Covid-19 – stoking concerns over supply chain security and assertive nationalism on the one hand, and US-China decoupling on the other, despite the pre-Covid inking of the phase-one US-China trade agreement. How far would calls for reshoring impinge on or reverse the globalization achieved over the past several decades?
- China’s ascendance and integration with the global economy since its WTO accession in late 2001 is most notable - eclipsing Japan in 2010 to become the world’s second largest economy after the US, with per capita income tripling since the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. As the first major economy to emerge from Covid-19, would China be able to fill the void economically? Will waning US global leadership and resulting multi-polar fragmentation accentuate downside risk for the US dollar amid the limitless quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve?
