Counting the Cost

China’s sky-high ambitions

The country is looking to the airline industry to stimulate its economy, but will it be boom or burden?

Few industries in China have expanded as rapidly as aviation and Boeing predicts that China will overtake the United States as the world’s largest aviation market by the year 2033.
 
Chinese airlines are expected to buy around 6,000 aircraft worth $870bn in just the next two decades. Beijing has invested around $24bn in the aviation industry, and it is already paying off with projected profits in 2013 of $4.5bn.

The country is getting a lot of help from US companies to build its own passenger jets. The ARJ21, which is a small regional jet, made its maiden flight six years ago and was brought together with a number of international components – 19 major US and European suppliers we involved.

However, the country faces a problem, infrastructure and training simply are not keeping pace with demand which means China currently has a shortfall of some 10,000 pilots, and it is estimated that there is a lack of around 8,000 air traffic controllers.

From next year China will relax the rules that govern its skies, allowing private planes to fly below 1,000 metres creating an expected surge in aircraft ownership among wealthy Chinese.

But what will be the impact on China’s economy? Will the aviation industry really help boost economic growth? 

Al Jazeera’s Adrian Brown took a visit to China’s largest aviation school to see what the future holds; and Cheng-Lung Wu, a lecturer at the School of Aviation at the University of New South Wales in Australia, joined the conversation.

Economic recovery: Who is benefitting? 

Is an economic recovery truly a recovery if everyday people do not feel it?

Bristol, in South West England, is traditionally a wealthy city. Yet in places there more than 50 percent of children live in poverty.

Jobs with no guarantee of work, public sector cuts have all helped feed corporate shareholders and the financial markets, but there is less and less wealth trickling down.

The UK government says its economic plan has worked. But for whom? And why are wages stagnating? Al Jazeera’s Laurence Lee reports from Bristol in the UK.

Low-income housing in India

In an ambitious move, India’s new government has promised housing for all within the next eight years. To make homes more affordable, they are encouraging foreign direct investment (FDI) in construction by allowing companies to invest in smaller projects with less money.

But advocates for the urban poor, like Rajesh Kumar, say the initiative will do little to ease the housing crisis. India needs to construct up to 50 million units by 2028, but even if these homes are built, slum residents may never be able to buy them at market rates.

So can poor communities afford to live in the houses they will build? Al Jazeera’s Karishma Vyas reports from India.

The king of economics

Stephen King is the chief economist at global bank HSBC, and this year he has got a theory about where the global economy is headed – and it is potentially nowhere.

Because while some countries want to start raising interest rates after years of stimulus, others need to do the opposite to kickstart their flagging economies.

So in an exclusive interview he tells us about the global monetary tug of war which could be played out in 2015.