Comment by dis-sys | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dis-sys | Hacker News Reader

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> China is the second largest economy in the world and will likely be the largest one in within one or two decades.

No, China is just a poor developing country with a per capita GDP of around $8k USD. That is just a small fraction of what US/EU achieved. Everything is just because of the huge population, but again that is not an advantage when the population is rapidly ageing.

Chinese communist party recently announced the goal to reach $12k USD gdp per capita in 2020, basically they want 1.4 billion people to work damn hard for the next 3-4 years to reach 20% of today's American GDP per capita level! To give you better understanding on this matter - US economy is growing 2.5%-3% annually in the last few quarters, with that kind of growth, in the same 2018-2020 period, US GDP per capita is going to add up to 9% and that new volume expected to be added is comparable to the entire Chinese per capita GDP figure.

Focusing on the total GDP and intentionally downplaying China's extremely poor per capita figure is not even politically correct - what can be individually achieved & enjoyed by those 1.4 billion regular Chinese are clearly far more important than a meaningless national GDP figure.

> Focusing on the total GDP and intentionally downplaying China's extremely poor per capita figure is not even politically correct - what can be individually achieved & enjoyed by those 1.4 billion regular Chinese are clearly far more important than a meaningless national GDP figure.

Depends what you're evaluating. If you're evaluating standard of living, yes. If OTOH you're evaluating the power potential of a country's government, then total GDP is more important than GDP/capita.

power potential of a country's government? what is the point of having/backing it when regular citizens couldn't have a fair share of that power?

telling 1.4 billion Chinese to work their ass off for the next 3-4 years so China's GDP per capita figure can reach 20% of today's US GDP per capita is not impressive at any level. it is a solid proof that China is still damn poor after 40 years of economic reform.

there is no competition whatsoever - when Japan challenged America's economy in the early 80s, the GDP per capita figure of Japan was on par with the American one. We are now talking about an economy that is working day & night trying to reach 20% of America's GDP per capita.

Interesting perspective, but they are a growing global power and still growing quickly. They might actually have a more effective government than western style democracies, but I hope that's not the case. It will be interesting to see what this century hold for China compared to India.

It is certainly impressive.

A market bigger than US governed by a single political entity, that has the ability to control its citizen beyond the imagination of any western governments.

That is enormous power, and it comes in aggregate. US has been the biggest/smartest country to turn its internal market into a weapon. Now that China has it, it will surely use to same, if not greater extent, and that is what makes it intimidating.

When comparing standard of living, GDP PPP is far more important than nominal GDP. By that measure, China’s GDP PPP is around Brazil’s and Mexico’s. That is middle income, not poor (very far off from extremely poor).

By the way, American GDP per capita has been high because of many fortunate factors in addition to the quality of its people: abundant resources and huge productive landmass relative to population size; mostly intact from WW II; tech, talent, and institution transfer from Europe; etc. It is a great country but also a very lucky country.

I start to wonder why there is quite a bit of cynicism (it goes beyond skepticism at this point) by some commenters on China’s progress or likely progress, despite so much tangible evidence?

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