1. China’s economic ‘miracle’ in context
- Author:
- Derek Scissors
- Publication Date:
- 08-2019
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
- Abstract:
- Contrasting China at various stages of reform to Japan and Korea at analogous stages shows China as less successful. The payoff is personal income, where China’s growth in local currency terms is similar to Japan’s. But it is slower than Korea’s, and, in comparable dollar terms, China is far behind Korea and Japan 40 years into the respective “miracles.” In evaluating key contributors to income gains—agricultural productivity, labor quantity and quality, leveraging, and innovation—China failed to extend education in the first 25 years of reform. A recent failure is the explosion in leveraging in the past decade. Other indicators of success roughly match Japan but trail Korea. China’s size makes it important even with less development success. For example, Chinese research and development spending affects the world while being inadequate to offset aging and indebtedness. When projecting economic size, though, trend extension is misleading. Korea and Japan illuminate how innovation and other factors will alter China’s trajectory.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy, Defense Policy, Economics, and Reform
- Political Geography:
- Japan, China, Asia, and Korea