Geographic Stages of the Global Financial Crisis Contagion and the Inspirations for Crisis Prevention in China

The financial crisis has been taking the place of the industrial crisis to be the symbol of the economic cycle since 1980s when the human society entered the era of knowledge economy and the era of globalization. Nowadays the assertion that financial crisis has become the main form of economic crises is strongly proved by the financial crisis breaking out in 2008, which has been called as a global crisis and a crisis of the century because of its vast destructiveness and profound impacts. This paper explored an issue: how does the global financial crisis contagion happen in the geographic dimension? According to the research on the financial crisis erupting in 2008, the process of global financial crisis contagion can be divided into three geographic stages based on the different mechanisms and characteristics of crisis contagion among different regions of the world. At the first stage, the financial crisis was transmitted from New York City to other major financial centers in the world with a geographically point-to-point transmission characteristic. The sub-prime mortgage crisis became the direct incentive for the financial crisis. Information played a crucial role at this stage. A series of bad news about the significant losses of many huge financial institutions due to the sub-prime crisis flied fast among financial centers. It triggered the confidence crisis over the major world financial markets, which finally developed into a devastating blow to financial system. Crisis contagion at this stage has its own characteristics: fast transmission speed, violent vibration and profound impact. The second stage that the crisis was transmitted from the major financial centers in the world to the developed countries is actually a process of crisis contagion from the financial sector to the real economic sector. The geographic characteristic of crisis contagion at this stage is a point-to-plane transmission process. The liquidity crisis deriving from the confidence crisis in financial system reduced the capital flow to the real economy, which made the production activity of most developed economies drop dramatically. The pessimistic anticipation of individuals and enterprises further weakened the demand of consumption and investment. The developed economies entered a vicious circle. The crisis at the second stage was self-enhanced. At the third stage, the crisis contagion from the developed countries to the developing countries was a result of the reduction of capital inflows to developing countries and the reduction of international trade amount. The crisis contagion at this stage has its own characteristics: the geographic contagion characteristic was a plane-to-plane transmission process; the speed of crisis transmission was relatively slow; crisis affected different developing countries in different ways, and economic recovery was slow because the deep-seated problems of the world economy were revealed at this stage. This paper analyzed the mechanism and characteristics of the global financial crisis contagion on every geographic stage, which enlightened the financial crisis contagion-proof measures for China. At first, an early-warning mechanism for crisis should be built up by establishing a comprehensive index system, a full-coverage information network and a immediate reaction mechanism, most of all, by enhancing the development of qualified personnel; secondly, the government should promote financial development under market-orientation principle and at the same time, should adopt appropriate regulation especially on certain important financial areas to prevent risks; thirdly, the domestic demand should be expanded to improve the ability to withstand the future crisis by creating more job opportunities, extending basic social security coverage, stimulating consumer demand in the rural areas and exploring potential markets; fourthly, the industrial structure should be further optimized, in order to improve the overall national strength.