"Which country would be dominant in the 21st century?" (#181, Topic F)
In one of the sessions at the DC Money Show today, the speaker showed a viewgraph, showing the dominant country from 16th century onward:
16th century: Spain
17th century: France
18th century: Netherlands
19th century: Great Britain
20th century: USA
21st century: ?
He then asked for a show of hands as to which country would be dominant in the 21st century. USA? About 8-10 hands (in an audience of 250+). India? 1 or 2. China? 50+. This was not unexpected, since (1) the session was billed as "Profit from the China Miracle in 2006" and (2) before that viewgraph, he showed another one stating that, by 2041, China would displace USA as the world's largest economy -- the World Bank's studies gave the date as early as 2020. (Almost as an after-thought, the speaker also asked about Japan -- 1 or 2 hands; Russia, ditto.) He then showed another viewgraph, on China's percentage to the world's GDP, ranging from a high of 32.93% in 1820 to a low of 4.5% in 1950. (For the last 2 years, I have been doing some research on China's economy in the 15th century (for my project on Zheng He) and in the 17th century (for my project on the impact of 16th-17th century Jesuits to the Chinese culture) -- China's percentage, invariably in the 20s prior to 1820, was consistent with the speaker's data.) He then said that there is some correlation between a country's population and its contribution to the world's GDP -- I also have a sneaky suspicion that this might be so, but empircal data cannot support this contention. Indeed, using the speaker's data, China's contribution to the world's GDP fluctuated much more violently than her population growth. All in all, it was a most informative session. (After the first viewgraph (detailed above) was flashed, a woman, sitting on the first row, muttered something about human rights. Unable to contain myself, I said: These five countries were all slave owners. She repeated what she said, prompting a man sitting next to her to say: This is not the place to discuss politics. With that, she remained quiet the rest of the session.)
16th century: Spain
17th century: France
18th century: Netherlands
19th century: Great Britain
20th century: USA
21st century: ?
He then asked for a show of hands as to which country would be dominant in the 21st century. USA? About 8-10 hands (in an audience of 250+). India? 1 or 2. China? 50+. This was not unexpected, since (1) the session was billed as "Profit from the China Miracle in 2006" and (2) before that viewgraph, he showed another one stating that, by 2041, China would displace USA as the world's largest economy -- the World Bank's studies gave the date as early as 2020. (Almost as an after-thought, the speaker also asked about Japan -- 1 or 2 hands; Russia, ditto.) He then showed another viewgraph, on China's percentage to the world's GDP, ranging from a high of 32.93% in 1820 to a low of 4.5% in 1950. (For the last 2 years, I have been doing some research on China's economy in the 15th century (for my project on Zheng He) and in the 17th century (for my project on the impact of 16th-17th century Jesuits to the Chinese culture) -- China's percentage, invariably in the 20s prior to 1820, was consistent with the speaker's data.) He then said that there is some correlation between a country's population and its contribution to the world's GDP -- I also have a sneaky suspicion that this might be so, but empircal data cannot support this contention. Indeed, using the speaker's data, China's contribution to the world's GDP fluctuated much more violently than her population growth. All in all, it was a most informative session. (After the first viewgraph (detailed above) was flashed, a woman, sitting on the first row, muttered something about human rights. Unable to contain myself, I said: These five countries were all slave owners. She repeated what she said, prompting a man sitting next to her to say: This is not the place to discuss politics. With that, she remained quiet the rest of the session.)
posted by David H. Li at 9:01 PM
1 Comments:
If there is a correlation between population growth rate and contribution to the world's GDP, then India - and not China - becomes the real contender. Also, have you heard about Bhutan's Gross Domestic Happiness (GDH) measure? How would China and the U.S. measure under that GDH scale, David?
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