sally cinnamon wrote:
Food consumption doesn't increase much in line with wealth: only when you go from being very poor to medium poor when you get things like people used to be not be able to afford meat etc. As countries become more developed food consumption levels off, in fact as they become more developed population growth can slow and their own agricultural productivity improves so their capacity to feed themselves gets better. As peoples incomes rise they don't spend more and more on getting fatter, they start buying other goods and services.
Its not easy for us to import food cheaply from the developing world anyway because of the tariffs under the common agricultural policy, the european farming lobby have seen to that.
As larger developing countries move up the income scale it will start to help us with our exports. Most of the stuff the UK exports is higher value stuff that you need to be middle income or high income to afford: pharmaceuticals, surgical/optical equipment, precious metals/jewellery, aircraft related products, financial services, insurance, creative industries etc. Most of our main export markets are USA and Western Europe because they are in these income levels. As China, India, Turkey etc approach those levels there are more people that will be in the income range to be potential buyers of British exports.
I refer you back to my first post on the thread. Remember how we called Japanese cars "Japcrap" and laughed that they only copieed our technology and were not innovative? Within less than 20 years our manufacturing of cars, TVs, etc was all but dead and we all wanted Japanese products because they were better made and more technologically advanced than ours. China as a centrally planned economy is putting sums of money into research facilities that the UK will never be able to match in real terms. I reckon that within 10-15 years they will overtake us in the sorts of areas you cite. That's when we are in real trouble.
They also have taken on board Western universties - eg Nottingham university has a presence in China with I think a replica of the UK's campus there.
