Infrastructure provision

This introductory chapter begins by considering the infrastructure challenge posed by what former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers calls the ‘Age of Secular Stagnation’ and International Monetary Fund managing director Christine Lagarde terms the ‘new mediocre of growth’. Both advocate increased infrastructure spending as the solution, but there are considerable differences between infrastructure policies in three of the largest economies. After decades of neglect, the United States and even Germany are saddled with once advanced, but increasingly outmoded infrastructure assets, while China keeps on building and has become an exemplar of modern urban transit, with ports, expressways, railways, subways, airports, and by far the world’s largest high-speed rail network. Nevertheless, a 2016 Oxford study challenges the efficacy of China’s infrastructure-led growth strategy. Upon examination, however, their study has serious defects and, contrary to their arguments, China’s infrastructure megaprojects appear less wasteful than those authors claim, and they have laid the foundations for Chinese growth, supported by a later case study.