Economics
As China Slows, Australia Feels the Pain
China’s slowdown is hitting the mining sector hard
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The last time Australia was mired in recession, Boris Yeltsin had yet to stand on a tank in Moscow, and the Clinton era hadn’t begun. In 1991, Australian trade with China was a modest A$3.6 billion (about the same in U.S. dollars). In the preceding decade unemployment had averaged 7.8 percent, as Australia struggled to develop tourism and other services to diversify growth.
The urbanization of hundreds of millions of people in China changed that: Demand in the world’s most populous nation for Australian iron ore and coal spurred a more than 33-fold increase in trade between the two countries to a recent A$121 billion. The Australian jobless rate is down to 5.1 percent.