Despite increasing media reporting on Chinaâs economy there is still a fundamental underestimation of the sheer scale of Chinaâs economic growth. It is not generally understood that no economic development on the scale of China has ever taken place previously in the whole of human history. This statement is not an overheated claim by a Chinese nationalist but simply an objectively measurable fact. As will be shown below, even growth in the US, the previous economically dominant state, or in the USSR after 1929, the previous largest example of rapid growth by the standards of a period, was on a qualitatively smaller scale than China.
â
The percentage of world population affected
The simplest and clearest gauge of the historically unparalleled scale of Chinaâs economic achievement is the number of people directly benefitting from it as they lived within Chinaâs borders â this being measured not only in absolute numbers but as a proportion of the worldâs population. Table 1 therefore shows the percentage of global population in the worldâs largest economies at the time they commenced very rapid sustained growth by the historical standards of the periods concerned.
â
The percentage of world population affected
The simplest and clearest gauge of the historically unparalleled scale of Chinaâs economic achievement is the number of people directly benefitting from it as they lived within Chinaâs borders â this being measured not only in absolute numbers but as a proportion of the worldâs population. Table 1 therefore shows the percentage of global population in the worldâs largest economies at the time they commenced very rapid sustained growth by the historical standards of the periods concerned.
Analysing these historical examples:
- The first country to experience sustained rapid economic growth was the UK in the Industrial Revolution, with 2.0% of the worldâs population.
- Sustained rapid US economic growth, after its Civil War, was in a country with 3.2% of the worldâs population.
- When Soviet rapid industrialisation began at the end of the 1920s the USSR contained 8.4% of the worldâs population – the international impact of the Soviet Union can be clearly understood by the fact that until 1949 the USSR was by far the biggest impact of industrialisation, in terms of the proportion of the worldâs population affected, in history. Almost three times as large a proportion of the worldâs population were directly affected by the industrialisation of the USSR as by the rapid economic growth of the US.
- Japanâs rapid post-World War II growth was in a country with 3.3% of the worldâs people.
- The growth of the four âAsian Tigersâ (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan Province) was in economies which together only comprised 1.4% of the worldâs population.
Additional countries might be included â for example Italy from 1950 (1.9% of the worldâs population) or Spain from 1960 (1.0% of the worldâs population) – but introducing these makes no significant difference. No other economy commencing sustained rapid economic growth approaches the 22% of the worldâs population in China in 1978 at the beginning of its economic reform. Chinaâs, at the time of economic âlift-offâ, was seven times the relative percentage of the world population of the US or Japan, and almost three times that of the USSR.
.
Scale of economic growth
Chinaâs scale of economic development translated into equally dramatic and unprecedented figures for comparative output increases. Measured at internationally comparable prices (PPPs), and adjusted for inflation, the greatest absolute increase in GDP in a single year ever recorded outside China was by the US in 1999 when it added $567 billion in output. The highest increase in production ever achieved in a single year by Japan, frequently thought of as a post-war âmiracleâ economy, was $212 billion. The single biggest GDP increase in a single year recorded by South Korea, the largest of the âAsian Tigerâ economies, was $90 billion. But in 2010 China added $1,126 billion in output.[1] The increase in Chinaâs GDP in a single year was therefore more than twice that ever achieved by the US and five times that of Japan. This again gives an index of the historically unprecedented scale of Chinaâs development.
Scale of economic growth
Chinaâs scale of economic development translated into equally dramatic and unprecedented figures for comparative output increases. Measured at internationally comparable prices (PPPs), and adjusted for inflation, the greatest absolute increase in GDP in a single year ever recorded outside China was by the US in 1999 when it added $567 billion in output. The highest increase in production ever achieved in a single year by Japan, frequently thought of as a post-war âmiracleâ economy, was $212 billion. The single biggest GDP increase in a single year recorded by South Korea, the largest of the âAsian Tigerâ economies, was $90 billion. But in 2010 China added $1,126 billion in output.[1] The increase in Chinaâs GDP in a single year was therefore more than twice that ever achieved by the US and five times that of Japan. This again gives an index of the historically unprecedented scale of Chinaâs development.
âNotes
[1] Calculated from (The Conference Board, 2013) Calculated in EKS PPPs.
â* * *
âThis article is adapted from Chapter 2 of The Great Chess Game (äžç性æŁ? ââäžćœæ°ćœèżè§Łæ)
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