FLASH
Shkruar nga Harold Thibault
The London Center for Economic and Business Research calculates that China will actually become the world's largest economy for 21 years, before the US regains its lead in 2057, to be overtaken by India around 2081.
The tipping point has begun, things will flow in that direction and China will overtake the US to become the world's leading economic power again. But when will this happen? It was 2014 when China's Gross Domestic Product (GDP), expressed in purchasing power parity (PPP), surpassed that of the US.
The latter compares a selection of common products and services from each economy to determine what the consumer can buy, eliminating the impact of exchange rates. But in a world of open trade, it is nominal GDP converted into dollars that measures the real weight of an economy relative to others.
However, the significant decline in economic growth during the Covid-19 pandemic, followed by a severe crisis in the real estate market, have left China in a difficult situation: high youth unemployment, low consumption from families worried about the future and deflation.
Meanwhile, the current economic fragility is not preventing major advances in some areas, such as electric cars. According to official statistics, the Chinese economy grew by 5.2 percent last year. According to the International Monetary Fund, China's GDP should reach 18.560 billion dollars (about 17.026 billion euros) by the end of this year.
Meanwhile, the American economy, which is emerging from inflation, still benefits from the advantage it has in technology but also from low-cost energy as the world's main current producer of oil and gas.
The US has recorded an economic growth of 2.5 percent in 2023, with a staggering GDP of 27.970 billion (trillion) dollars. The current situation is a far cry from 2010, when China recorded economic growth of 8 to 10 percent while the United States was in recession.
An aging population
In these conditions, some dare to ask: Will China really become the main economic power of the world? They cite the example of Japan stalling after its meteoric growth in the 1980s. For a long time, many experts agreed that this would happen in the 2020s and 2030s.
However, at the end of 2022, economists at Citibank estimated that this will happen in the mid-2030s. Meanwhile, economists at the Japan Center for Economic Research, for their part, believe that China will never pass this point. This thesis is supported by the economist Mohamed El-Erian, vice-president of the Royal College in Cambridge (Great Britain), in an article for the Financial Times in September 2023.
The London Center for Economic and Business Research calculates that China will actually become the world's largest economy for 21 years, before the US regains its lead in 2057, to be overtaken by India around 2081.
Pessimists point to China's difficulty in making the transition to a true consumer society, and the burden of an aging population that has already peaked. But do these questions have any relevance to the daily life of the Chinese?
GDP per capita certainly does. It is currently $83,000 in the US and only $13,000 in China ($24,000 in purchasing power). If the ranking is important, it is primarily because the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has made a pact with its population, which was repeated by Xi Jinping at the beginning of his term: By 2049, the 100th anniversary of the People's Republic , he will have built a "great modern socialist country", a "strong" power.
The prospect of climbing to the top of the global podium is implicit. Chinese leaders were very humble when they passed the US in terms of purchasing power in 2014. They were also humble when China overtook Germany and Japan. After all, the population knows very well that its standard of living is much lower than that of these countries!
But to make more than 1 billion people individually "prosperous," China must become the world's leading economy. If the Communist Party fails to lead China to that position by 2049, then the promise of a bright economic future for every Chinese will not have been kept. 2049 is the only year that really matters./ Pamphlet adapted from "Le Monde"
Lini një Përgjigje