RAND's Ali Wyne on China
Can We Guess China’s Future from Knowing Its Past?
A first for the planet! No country has ever done so much so fast
The RAND Corporation’s Ali Wyne, in a review of Elizabeth Economy’s new book on China, The Third Revolution, encapsulates China’s mind-blowing economic accomplishments since 2001. All in 124 words. Ali, nice job!
Here’s Ali’s 124 mind-blowing words:
“Between 2001, when it joined the World Trade Organization, and 2016, the latest year for which the World Bank has data, its gross domestic product grew roughly ninefold, from US$1.34 trillion to US$11.2 trillion; its share of the world economy roughly quadrupled, from 4 percent to just under 16 percent; and its per-capita GDP rose almost eight-fold, from US$1,053 to US$8,123. It overtook Germany as the world’s largest exporter in 2009 and displaced the United States as the world’s largest goods trader in 2013. Between 2000 and 2017, it went from generating the equivalent of roughly a quarter of America’s manufacturing output to generating more than the US and Japan combined. Between 2012 and 2016, it accounted for some 34 percent of global growth.”
In the process, China uplifted 500 million of its people from poverty to middle-class life.
That’s a first for the planet! No country has ever done so much so fast.
Plus, there’s zero countries in East Asia or ASEAN that have not shared in China’s economic bounty.
What's That Say About China's
Ongoing Influence in Asia?
Ali Wyne’s masterful description conjures some interesting China questions.
- Can China do with technology what it has done with economics?
- Can China automate its some two million factories?
- Is there any tech company anywhere that does not want to participate in that looming technology extravaganza?
- In his The Fourth Industrial Revolution, isn’t Klaus Schwab right on the money with: “We have yet to grasp fully the speed and breadth of this new revolution. We are witnessing profound shifts across all industries, marked by the emergence of new business models, the disruption of incumbents and the reshaping of production, consumption, transportation and delivery systems.”
- Isn’t China the epicenter of Schwab’s Fourth Industrial Revolution?
- Aren’t robots, AI, and digitization at the heart of that epicenter?