Convergence by China and India
January 5, 2011 Leave a comment
It is truly amazing how fast China and India are catching up with the rest of the world and how powerful the absolute size of China and India will be (maybe adding Brazil) relative to the rest of the world. It is worth reading this interesting article in FT on this subject.
Suppose China were to follow Japan’s path during the 1950s and 1960s. Then it would still have 20 years of very fast growth in front of it, reaching some 70 per cent of US output per head by 2030. At that point, its economy would be a little less than three times as large as that of the US…and larger than that of the US and western Europe combined. India is further behind. At recent rates of growth, India’s economy would be about 80 per cent of that of the US by 2030, though its gross domestic product per head would still be less than a fifth of US levels.
China is today where Japan was in 1950, relative to US levels at that time. But its output per head is far higher in absolute terms, since US levels have themselves risen threefold. Today, China’s real GDP per head is roughly where Japan’s was in the mid-1960s and South Korea’s in the mid-1980s. India’s are where Japan was in the early 1950s and South Korea in the early 1970s.
via FT.com / Comment / Op-Ed Columnists – In the grip of a great convergence.
About Stephen E. McGaughey
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