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Business Daily: The challenges for China

19/03/2012

The challenges for China

BBC World Service - Business Daily, The challenges for China

How will China tackle endemic corruption and rapidly growing inequality?

How will China tackle endemic corruption and rapidly growing inequality?  Plus Lucy Kellaway on whether our bosses should decide when we travel.

The purge of Chinese Communist party star Bo Xilai last week has drawn unwelcome attention to a growing phenomena in China - the increasing wealth of the country's political representatives.  

Bo is a wealthy scion of one of China's revolutionary heroes and one of a surprisingly large number of very rich people who dominate the Chinese political machine.  

Gary Liu is the deputy director of Lujiazui International Finance Research Centre.  He has been comparing the wealth of political representatives in the US and in China and has discovered that in China they are - in relative terms - significantly richer.  Justin Rowlatt asks him what his work tells us about Chinese politics and the challenges facing the country's communist rulers?

Justin also interviews the Chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, Jim O'Neil, one of the most acute observers of the global economy.

Jim O'Neil was once described as an economic rock star for his success predicting the movement of the $1 trillion a day foreign exchange markets.  

Justin asks him what he thinks the unseating of Bo Xilai -  a man with a reputation as a political conservative - says about the future path of the Chinese economy?

Plus - every manager knows that cutting costs is one of the easiest routes to increased profitability.  The trick is making the right cuts.  

Travel always appears an easy target - the benefits of business travel are often at best intangible.  So how about banning travel on certain days of the month as some companies are beginning to do?

Our regular commentator, Lucy Kellaway of the Financial Times, believes it can see arbitrary to employees but does it succeed in trimming budgets?

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