this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2024
36 points (92.9% liked)
World News
2307 readers
122 users here now
founded 4 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
They are being intentionally malicious.
Liberal developmental economic theory states that the growth rate will slow down as the country in question becomes more advanced. It's impossible to grow at 12% a year in perpetuity forever.
This is a phoenomenon that is observed regardless of the economic model in question whether it is the USSR, South Korea, or China.
It is the technological and infrastructural catchup that is causing the massive growth rate for a developing country and as the gap closes, the growth will slow naturally. If we assume otherwise that China's natural rate of growth is 12% while that of the USA is 2%, China will be bigger than America by approximately 10,000 fold in just 100 years which is nonsense.
Ignoring this fact for the past 20 years while reporting on China's slow growth every quarter like clockwork is intentional malice.
So you're saying that, since China has or nearly has caught up to developed countries, it's high growth rate suggests that its economy is actually outperforming Western Democracies by a large margin? Am I understanding that correctly?
Also they never mention the US's growth rate for the same period whenever China's is mentioned.
Yes, you are reading it correctly a 5% economic growth during a worldwide economic downturn and 8% during normal times is heroic considering that China's GDP per capita is over 12,000 USD. GDP growth percentage is something that is entirely dependent on the existing economy, and the bigger your per capita GDP is, the slower it has the potential to grow inherently.
Growth isn't something that happens in a vacuum. If it were, then America would be able to grow at 20% YoY which is complete nonsense at a cursory glance. It happens due to infrastructural development, technological advancements, and increasing education of the populace. There are limits to these factors which is why Marx (and Piketty more recently) mathematically showed the fundamental flaw in the capitalist system long-term.
The only misunderstanding is that China hasn't caught up to developed countries. It nearly has in tier 1 or even tier 2 cities in many respects, but China's development is uneven especially due to its speed of growth.
I think a decent measure is GDP growth rate divided by GDP per capita. I don't have the numbers on hand but China is above average in both absolute and PPP.