From Investors Business Daily

The World Bank’s latest estimates for the global economy contained a stunner of a statistic: China accounts for just under 10% of the world’s total output — or about 40% smaller than thought.

At $5.3 trillion based on 2005 data, China’s economy is still No. 2. But it has considerably more ground to make up before passing the U.S. in absolute size — if, in fact, it should ever do so. Total world output in 2005 was $55 trillion. The U.S. produced $12.4 trillion of that — with a population only one-fourth the size of China’s.

…

World Bank statisticians got access to real data on China for the first time ever, and came away surprised. “The previous, less reliable, methods led to estimates (of China’s GDP) . . . 40% larger than the results of the new, improved methods and benchmark,” the World Bank report said.

This should be a lesson for those who take international statistics at face value. Anytime you’re off by 40%, it’s more than a rounding error. It’s a big mistake — largely China’s fault, since it wouldn’t let anyone accurately measure its economy before.

And this is of more than just statistical interest. It means, for instance, that there are likely more than 300 million Chinese who live below the World Bank’s $1-a-day poverty line — not the 100 million previously estimated.

This helps explain why China’s communist regime still cracks down hard on any manifestations of dissent — contrary to its PR of China as the land of perpetual economic boom. It knows how bad things really are in the undeveloped hinterlands.

It also calls into question China’s financial ability to support a massive military buildup to challenge the U.S. Dollarwise, the country just won’t have the money — at least not yet. And besides, it should be spending that money on development — not arms.

In a way this is bad news as many US companies are basing their growth on a “China strategy”. Essentially selling their product to a growing Chinese middle class. A middle class that isn’t anywhere near as big as previously thought. On the other hand this development actually stabilizes the far east. If these numbers are correct China isn’t really in a position to do anything about Taiwan and Japan remains the dominant economic power, which works out well for the US.

China, Economics

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008 at 8:28 am by Chad and is filed under Brilliant, but uncategorizable. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.