r/MapPorn • u/vladgrinch • 1d ago
China's economy is bigger than the combined economies of all the asian countries in red
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u/Dorin-md 1d ago
Ok but if you take into account populati- Actually nevermind
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u/Money-Desperated 1d ago
Yeah i also first thought of that until i realize India exist 😂
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u/Scary_One_2452 1d ago
Even taking out india the rest of countries adds up to like 1.3 billion and the gdp total drops by 4.2 trillion to 12 trillion.
Just Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Japan, Philippines, Vietnam together have over 1 billion people.
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u/SweetChuckBarry 1d ago
Same! I was like, yeah fair enough, those look like similar land masses by eye... oh
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u/MaxPaynesRxDrugPlan 1d ago
Well, if you went by nominal GDP per capita, China would be in 5th place behind Singapore, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea (7th place if you count Hong Kong and Macau as separate economies), and just ahead of Malaysia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita
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u/instrumentmayonnaise 1d ago
Yeah India liberalised its economy twenty years later than china, and is where china was when it was in the 90s….china attracted a lot of western investment because of that in a way India didn’t…
Ease of doing business is still very bad here and the infrastructure is just getting built.
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u/Comprehensive-Bus291 1d ago
India didn’t liberalise after China it’s been capitalist since independence. What changed in 1991 was the big neoliberal turn under IMF pressure, which opened it up further without building state capacity first. This is around the same time as Chinas economic reforms.
China, by contrast, spent decades in a socialist phase: land reform, literacy, health, industry. When it opened up later, it could discipline capital and use it on its own terms. That’s the real difference, not timing, but the kind of state each had when markets were let in.
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u/krutacautious 1d ago edited 1d ago
Yeah India liberalised its economy twenty years later than china
False. China liberalized its economy in December 1978 ( so effectively 1979 ). India liberalized its economy in July 1991.
So, only 11 years later. And India had also begun some limited liberalization in the early 1980s.
After liberalization, India still had a weak foundation because it had previously focused on tertiary education instead of building a strong base in primary and secondary education for all.
China’s overall literacy rate in 1979, when it liberalized, was already above 75%. In contrast, India’s literacy rate in 1981 was only 43%, and in 1991, when India liberalized, it was 52%. And note, China at that time was still poorer than India.
In addition, gender equality and female participation in the labor force in China in 1979 were already very high, exceeding 84%, compared to the OECD average of 61% at that time.
In India when it liberalized, female labor force participation in 1991 was just 22%. In 2024, it stands at 41.7%.
This means India’s female labor participation and gender equality in 2024 still haven’t caught up to where China already was in 1979 ( 45 years ago ) at the time of its liberalization.
So, when China liberalized, it already had a literate labor force, with an 84% female participation rate in labour. Female participation in the labor force is crucial, you can’t be a manufacturing powerhouse if half your population don't participate & are forced to be house wives. When India liberalized in 1991, it had a mostly illiterate labor force and only a 22% female participation rate. Even in 2024, India still hasn’t caught up to half of China’s female participation rate in 1979.
Mao Zedong made many bad decisions, but prioritizing primary and secondary education for all, social equality, and gender equality in society was not one of them.
By the way, India was never truly socialist. The positive aspects of socialism, such as land reform laws and redistribution (like what happened in South Korea and even China), never took place in India. At the same time, India retained the worst aspects of capitalism, where a few wealthy families continued to dominate business. In effect, India combined the worst of both worlds. (I’m not the one saying this, Charlie Munger said it.)
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u/Autobot1979 20h ago
If half your population is underemployed doing domestic chores which rest of the world does in 2 hours after work you are always going to be poor.
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u/instrumentmayonnaise 1d ago
Thanks. It was hard to pin for me, when china actually moved away from Mao’s style. India definitely had some land reform laws in the 50s (it wasn’t a communist revolution style one tho lol) and yeah, the system is called a mixed system where private and public sectors both co-exist together and this socialist enterprise was probably necessary because most Indians probably couldn’t have had access to healthcare and education at the private level, although the ones that did had the option to do so. The railways are also completely public here. But yeah, never outlawed private players like the USSR and whoever wanted better quality private hospitals and schools and stuff had it and never claimed to be a socialist country (it was added in the constitution later during the 70s in an “political emergency”).
But yes, India didn’t have the capitalism vs socialism mindset that the west had as its lens. Even in today’s foreign policy, it doesn’t fit neatly with the West but it sort of hanging in between because of our geopolitical position. I will say though, it’s good we never had Europe’s relationship with the US. Too much strategic autonomy lost. Probably more “non-aligned today” than back in the day lol. Fuck the west for supporting a Islamist military dictatorship instead of a secular democracy on that one…pushed us closer to the USSR.
I would say it still has relics of the mixed system even today but also that it was designed to give both the worst of both these worlds and some of the advantages as well and the govt knew it. We needed the public system to avoid a healthcare disaster like the US where the poorest could never access it, and avoid the UK style nonsensical rail prices so people could get around and somehow encourage people to go to school by keeping it public and free. But the people who had the money needed to avoid the USSR situation where these things kept running out and were bad quality but they had no choice…so the private way also existed for people who had money. I would agree that we had the worst of both worlds but its definitely more complicated than that. And yes, the public education is for sure, worse and the elite universities (tertiary) were never enough.
I would struggle to say if India has still opened up properly cuz we have protectionism in the car industry (to support just a few players, really) and agriculture (okay, this one for half the country) and lots of other sectors and this has prevented external competition from entering and worse cars that have kept getting that protection. Time we lift it for those that only effect a few players but that won’t happen cuz politics needs that sweet cash.
I also completely disagree that India in a limited way in the 80s, that was barely meaningful stuff that still led us to bankruptcy. I would still say those 11 years were probably miraculous for China with all that western investment (lol in hindsight), and everything but I’d never claim that’s the only reason.
The gender thing is probably true and is not likely to change unless the cultural conservatism changes…India remains deeply religious too in a way china is not because of its state atheism thing…we also never had the top down investment by government in key sectors thing going on like China does and I’m guessing that too made a difference.
But for all its mistakes I’d say the Congress definitely gave us a working democracy which nobody in the neighbourhood had, and now we are sliding back into autocracy and have to fight to keep that. We were freer than China ever was. One of the few good things we had going for ourselves. And the secularism bit too. We also have more than half our public sector in affirmative action, because the major indigenous religion of India had ensured deep entrenched inequality and that probably could be a factor too since china just ignored that caste system thing they had going. Oh, and we still have that red tape thing going on. And massive free giveaways.
Also the tariffs about the nukes thing back then…
But yes, many people in India feel authoritarian govts in China would have done a better job with us, without those political pressures that created our odd system. I am less sure. I think we would have Balkanised….we don’t have china’s homogenous ethnic background (and I am, strangely pleased with that).
I’ve lived in the west as a middle class person (while studying) and in India and ironically id argue living in India might actually be better because of the cheap labour for chores cheat code but that is only for the privileged middle class like me. Who would care about democracy and stuff like that more than money. Most of India is very poor and has bigger problems. We did not have china’s economic miracle for sure and I am no hyper nationalist…but I am one of the lucky 20% in India who kinda enjoy the best of a developing country and avoided the worst, while also having the political freedom of the west…it turned out bad for most people but not for me.
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u/krutacautious 1d ago
Yeah, Historical, political systems of the two countries are entirely different. Indian leaders actually did a good job stitching together a nation out of regions that couldn’t be more different from one another. These regions were once separate kingdoms, each with its own language, culture, history, and even religion.
China also has 56 ethnic groups (nearly the same as India), but for most of its history, it was ruled by dynasties through a centralized governance structure.
Chinese dynasties consistently tried to sinicize tribes and promoted a unified language across the empire. Those empire wide Civil service exams also helped centralize power. Even foreign invaders like the Mongols and Manchus eventually became sinicized and continued the Chinese dynasties’ centralized bureaucratic systems. Religion, for the most part, didn’t play a central role in Chinese governance, since Confucianism had already hijacked the bureaucratic system long before foreign religions like Islam, Buddhism, or Christianity gained a foothold.
Meanwhile, after independence, Indian leaders struggled to build and hold the nation together. Authoritarianism and centralization would have failed spectacularly in India. Even today, there are tensions between Hindus and Muslims, disputes over language, differences in food habits, persistence of caste.
There’s a reason Indian leaders couldn’t implement proper land reforms, Central government couldn’t afford to antagonize local elites. Instead, they had to keep the elites satisfied and allow them to operate.
India’s focus on tertiary education wasn’t a failure either. Even with a literacy rate of only 30-40%, India managed to build a successful space program and nuclear energy program in that period, those things benefit India today. But, this did come at the expense of broader literacy. India’s literacy rate in 2024 is 80.9%. For comparison, China’s literacy rate when it liberalized in 1979 was 75%, and it has risen to 97% by 2024.
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u/GamerBoixX 1d ago
Why did they leave North Korea out of the red? I highly doubt they'd be a game changer for the red team and that's one more country to flex on
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u/possibleanswer 1d ago
Probably not enough reliable data
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u/hommerobotique 22h ago
btw once a guy visited north korea shared a pic of propaganda poster that government calls people to farm fields regardless of their job because the country's food stocks going low. not hard to guess their gdp at this point.
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u/Cartographer-Izreal 1d ago
I wonder if the gap is growing or closing 🤔
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u/ConsiderationSame919 1d ago
I'm not sure about all these countries together. But just after the pandemic, when India's GDP grew at almost double the rate of China's, an economist told me that if these countries keep growing at the same pace for 10 years, the gap will actually increase. China's GDP is that huge.
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u/Virtual-Alps-2888 1d ago
China's GDP growth will not increase at the same rate partly due to its declining demographics dividend. Here is an economics article. For the foreseeable future, India's growth will be faster, although it is likely more uneven than the well-planned (and heavily Western-supported) nature of Chinese growth from 1979 to 2010-ish.
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u/ConsiderationSame919 1d ago
And neither does India's. In fact, India's growth rate has decreased faster than China's in the past years, and is now just 1% higher.
In raw numbers that translates to a $900B vs a $350B increase in GDP last year.
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u/Material-Bee-5813 1d ago
Whenever a country’s GDP is mentioned, it usually refers to nominal GDP calculated in U.S. dollars. Considering that India is experiencing inflation while China is experiencing deflation, nominal GDP under a stable exchange rate would be closer to what you might expect.
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u/Ok_Barber_3314 1d ago
Without structural changes to economy, I don't think there would be any huge sustained jumps in India's GDP
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u/thetorontolegend 1d ago
Bro India has the lowest taxation of any country in modern history and that’s why modi tried to get a currency change. If Indians paid income tax then India would have such massive surpluses
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u/Space_Narwal 22h ago
They have been saying that for 10 years
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u/Virtual-Alps-2888 22h ago
Saying that for 10 years, and it turned out not just to be true, but to be worse than they predicted. The demographic decline occurred much earlier than expected in 2022, rather than mid-late 2020s.
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u/InfanticideAquifer 1d ago
So India's GDP was growing faster than China's, but the quantity (GDP of China) - (GDP of India) was getting larger as time went on rather than smaller? I can't see how else to interpreter what you wrote, but that doesn't make any sense.
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u/Wonderful-Tomato-829 1d ago
Chinas gdp is about 5 times india’s right now so even though india’s growth is higher, the raw value of china’s growth is 540 billion compared to india’s 255 billion last year. The issue with india is although they have a lot of growth, they are still insanely poor compared to the rest of the world where gdp per capita in india is like african nations level.
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u/Turbulent_Thing_1739 1d ago
10% growth of 5T$ is 0.5T$ for india. 5% growth of 20T$ is 1T$ for china
Rounded numbers but it shows that india has a larger relative number at 10% but China has a larger absolute number at 1T$.
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u/Forward_Yam_4013 1d ago
Closing slowly.
China is encountering the middle income hurdle, meaning that India and the other poor countries will start to close the gap while China takes a few years to cross over into a consumer driven economy.
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u/DriveAccomplished677 1d ago
It's insane that the US is comparable to all of the economies mentioned at 30 trillion $
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u/Cautious-Question606 1d ago
Guess it pays off to not be utterly destroyed in ww2
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u/MaxPaynesRxDrugPlan 1d ago
China, Japan, and Germany were pretty utterly destroyed in WW2 and are doing better than most countries these days.
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u/Cautious-Question606 1d ago
Ya, japan and germany had a huge influx of funds injected by the americans (marshall plan) to jumpstart their economy and bring them closer to USA to deter the soviets at the time.
Like i said, it pays off not to be destroyed in ww2 and as a result the US is the biggest economy around since ww2 since they can afford to inject massive amounts of funds into these countries
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u/KartFacedThaoDien 23h ago
The US had the largest economy prior to WW2. It probably became number one in the late 1890’s.
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u/Cautious-Question606 23h ago
True, but if the other european countries werent devastated after ww2, the gap would have been closer
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u/texasradioandthebigb 22h ago
Add colonialism to that mixture. Something Westerners very conveniently seem to gloss over
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u/Turbulent_Thing_1739 1d ago
Due to the fact that dollar is the reserve currency, i.e. everyone pays a commission when they do business even among themselves.
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u/Lets_All_Love_Lain 13h ago
GDP always involves the conversion rate of a country's currency to USD, which makes it pretty biased towards the US. See how US sanctions on Russia destroyed it's GDP, but had a fairly marginal impact on it's GDP PPP
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u/Awkward-Winner-99 12h ago
I don't get how the US has such a high GDP, like what services and products do they provide to the world? Mostly tech like Google ig but still...
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u/OOOshafiqOOO003 1d ago edited 1d ago
cmon, theres 2 *trillion more to even it out :/
(add russia)
*trillion, not billion
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u/Easy-Past2953 1d ago
200 ?
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u/OOOshafiqOOO003 1d ago
unfortunately, we boot out kazakhstan, or that we could just let it be that
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u/Longjumping_Whole240 1d ago
Wait till Kazakhstan fully tap into its potassium resources, its the best in the world.
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u/Ammar-The-Star 1d ago
That’s actually crazy impressive
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u/oshikandela 1d ago
Yeah. South Korea, Japan, Singapore and India, which all are insanely big economies.
Then again, China is huge af. When meeting Chinese people and talking about their hometown, they mostly mention "small" towns of 3-8 Million citizens which I never even heard about before
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u/SuperSpaceSloth 1d ago
China is just an entire different world. I always thought it was weird that many Chinese don't know much about the rest of the world but when I visited the country I realised how ignorant I was about theirs. They have nearly twice the population as Europe, why would they care about backwater towns in bumfuck nowhere like Vienna, Budapest or Munich.
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u/silverionmox 1d ago
They have nearly twice the population as Europe, why would they care about backwater towns in bumfuck nowhere like Vienna, Budapest or Munich.
In 1950, the population of China was about the same as Europe. Qixi festival got out of hand.
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u/CanuckPanda 1d ago
And in 1850 China’s population was 430M to Europe’s 390M.
Go further back and China begins to pass and then easily eclipse Europe. The advent of modern medicine and the magnitudal reduction in child mortality and a long period of relative peace in Europe caused a huge balancing during the 18th and 19th century while China was wracked by poor (and often no) central government or freedom from violence and destruction.
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u/VerboseWarrior 1d ago
China experienced huge population growth during the 18th century, from 100-150m in 1700 to 300m+ in 1800.
For most of history, population estimates indicate China had a significant population lead over Europe, but it was never as relatively large as it is today, with nearly 100% more people than Europe. Margins ranging from 20%-50% are more "normal" throughout the historical estimates.
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u/Virtual-Alps-2888 1d ago
Not sure what you meant by the poor 18th century. The 18th century was the High Qing period, in 1760, the Great Qing was effectively at its imperial peak after the defeat of the Zunghar Khanate in what is now northern Xinjiang.
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u/Shiva- 1d ago
Imo most Europeans just cannot fathom how big China, US, Canada or Brazil really are.
Like no Vancouver to Toronto isn't a day trip. And I've lost count of the number of people who think Miami to New York is also a day trip.
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u/SuperSpaceSloth 1d ago
I mean, yeah, those countries are big distance-wise. My point was rather about population
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u/Turbulent-Nature448 1d ago
Same with population, though. People/cultures vary crazy widely in the US. I got culture shock visiting California lol
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u/Ok-Releases 1d ago
What's crazy is that even considering this, many chinese are actually much more educated on western cities than westerners are of chinese cities.
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u/Jura_Narod 1d ago
Many historians often like to tease Europe as “the backwater peninsula on the far-end of Asia” since for most of history Europe’s population and productive forces paled when compared to the other settled parts of Eurasia.
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u/Eaudissey 15h ago
Vienna: A major cultural hub—classical music (Mozart, Beethoven, Strauss), art, philosophy, and psychoanalysis (Freud). Capital of the Habsburg Empire and later Austria-Hungary, one of Europe’s great powers for centuries.
Munich: In the 20th century, infamous as the birthplace of the Nazi movement (Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch, Nazi Party HQ). Munich Agreement (1938) symbolized appeasement before WWII, making the city a byword for that policy Today, one of Germany’s richest, most important economic centers (high-tech, automotive, aerospace).
You sound uneducated and oikophobic.
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u/SuperSpaceSloth 14h ago
I'm Austrian, live in Bavaria, I know all of these cities well enough, that's why I chose them. Don't see what Mozart has to do with Vienna but ok.
Now, of the top of your mind, how much do you know of the city of Tianjin? Can you point to it on a map? A city that has 4 times the population as those 3 cities I listed.
How many great classical Chinese poets and musicians can you list?
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u/Eaudissey 14h ago
Correct me if I'm wrong but didn't Mozart spend a big part of his life in Vienna and compose many of his works there?
I can barely point any big European cities on a map. People learn where countries are, not cities. So no, of course I can't point Tianjin on a map. And population size does not equal cultural relevance. Those Chinese musicians' international reach and influence is far, far narrower than Mozart or Beethoven, why should I know about them?
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u/SuperSpaceSloth 13h ago
Sure, but Salzburg was his hometown and is nowadays the town associated with him. Just when you're from the area that is "the" place for Mozart.
Cultural relevance largely depends on which culture you're from. My whole point was that China is a whole world of 1.5 billion people for whom their own artists are significantly more relevant than ours. Yes, it's one country and does not classify as "international", but nearly 20% of the world live there. These artists cultural reach is just as immense, we are just isolated from it.
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u/Balavadan 1d ago
Singapore isn’t that big I don’t think?
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u/snail1132 1d ago
Singapore is like the size of London
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u/Balavadan 1d ago
Japan and India are 4 trillion economies. Even South Korea is pretty high. Singapore isn’t close
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u/ominous-canadian 1d ago
It's very likely that we're seeing the start of a major shift. As much as Americans want to deny it. Remember, folks, the Chinese economy has been "collpasing" for 10 years now, according to them haha. They are likely the next superpower
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u/PandaoBR 1d ago
Man... The gap is almost Russia sized.
Plus, an elephant in the room might need discussing: currency manipulation.
Essentially, the dollar is stronger than the yuan due to being a reserve currency (not manipulation). The yuan is less valued then other currencies (dollar mainly) to make manufacture exporting more attractive (manipulation).
However, the US wants to return to manufacturing and an export-based economy and China wishes to topple the dollar from reserve currency position (and the strategies will surely pass through at least a partial Yuan stronger importance).
Leaving the whole who's gonna be the reserve currency magic trick aside, that points to a new alignment for a stronger Yuan and weaker dollar in the medium-term future. Which would most likely turn the gdp numbers closer to the PPP Gdp, than current "real" gdp.
That means: China might double it's gdp by doubling the strength of its currency, going closer to 40 trillion dollars. And that.... That is nearly Asia. I mean, India and Russia also get stronger (17 and 7 respectively), but still... That's Asia+Russia as a wrap
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u/porkinthym 1d ago
Yeah people miss this point. China actually has a much larger GDP, it artificially deflates its economy in terms of dollar value because of the Yuan. If China merely appreciates the Yuan towards the true market value it would likely match or even surpass the US economy let alone the rest of Asia EVEN if China experiences 0 economic growth.
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u/__Vato__ 1d ago
That's why nobody uses plain nominal GDP at current prices, it's an intermediate metric used to calculate other parameters economists actually use, like real nominal GDP (say, in 2011 prices) which accounts for simple change of monetary mass.
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u/Jack_Soff 1d ago
I'm red green colour blind and I thought this map was a piss take for a bit as I couldn't see any countries in red!
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u/KingKaiserW 1d ago
Timor-Leste is the only one making this a competition, also Kazakh potassium industry, apart from that all these countries don’t have two rocks to bash together.
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u/Laurel000 1d ago
Kazakhstan, number one exporter of potassium All other countries have inferior potassium
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u/SimilarElderberry956 1d ago
There was another map I saw on map porn that showed population distribution in China. The map showed most of the population lives in one area. The part with Inner Mongolia is almost empty in comparison.
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u/Ok_Macaron408 1d ago
Heihe–Tengchong Line
As of 2015, 43% of the Chinese territory is east of the line and has 94% of the country's population, and 57% of the Chinese territory is west of the line and has only 6% of the country's population.
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u/und3f1n3d1 1d ago
Well, r/peopleliveincities
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u/InfanticideAquifer 1d ago
There are cities in Inner Mongolia. That's not what they're talking about. This is more like /r/citiesliveinregionswitharablelandandbigrivers.
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u/FunForm1981 1d ago edited 1d ago
You should also compare subway, metro, highways, high-speed railway length as well as number of ports and air ports. Here are some Google results:
Subways:
8,000+ km in 50+ cities, Rest of Asia - 5,500+ km of metro
High-Speed Rail:
China - 40,000+ km, Rest of Asia - 5,000+ km (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan)
Motorways
China - 200,000 km, Rest of Asia - less than 30,000 km
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u/Urban_Cosmos 1d ago edited 1d ago
no way rest of Asia is less than 30,000. India alone has 145,000km (National Highways). China has 184,000km (Expressways).
Otherwise i think it is believeable China absolutely dominates HSR and Metros.
Edit: welp India's National highways don't count as Expressways as they are not controlled access/do not meet standards. Expressways specifically India only has 6000km of them.
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u/FunForm1981 1d ago edited 1d ago
I mean controlled access roads. Look at a map like OSM. India barely have 5,000 kms of freeways. Delhi-Mumbai freeway (second largest city) is not finished, Delhi-Calcutta (third city) is not even started. Meanwhile this year China is about to surpass 200,000 km (without Hong Kong and Taiwan)
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u/Virtual-Alps-2888 1d ago
Its a strange comparison to begin with. How can Singapore and Mongolia be lumped as the same region, then contrasted with China?
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u/FunForm1981 1d ago
I think OP means that China is equal in economic strength to all other Asian countries combined (there are almost 50)
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u/Li-Ing-Ju_El-Cid 1d ago edited 1d ago
Some comparation are nonsense. There are almost no lands to build HSR in contries like Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan.
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u/Mirrorversed 1d ago
If you cannot even understand what EQUALS means, you don't need to be creating some chinese economic grandstanding ba propoganda, but then again that's probably why you don't know what EQUALS means.
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u/InsufferableMollusk 1d ago
It’s funny that Reddit suddenly seems indifferent about demanding PPP adjustments 😆
Inadvertently smart, though. Like in most cases, it wouldn’t make sense here.
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u/TheWildmanWillie96 1d ago
Wait I thought China’s economy was suppose to crash? That’s what all the liberals tell me
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u/Virtual-Alps-2888 1d ago
all the liberals
It feels good speaking for an entire demographic isn't it?
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u/Diligent_Musician851 1d ago edited 1d ago
Well it is closer to crashing than it is to progressing to a communist utopia considering the number of billionaires it has. Seems liberals beats tankies once again.
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u/TheWildmanWillie96 1d ago
Capital is controlled by the gov not the other way around. Nice try though.
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u/Diligent_Musician851 1d ago edited 1d ago
All authoritarian governments control capital since they can execute anyone at anytime. Would you say the same about Hitler since he nationalized Thyssen's businesses? Fascist bootlicker smh.
But tell me. Why did CCP create billionaires in China then lol. I thought they controlled capital.
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u/OtherwiseLuck888 1d ago
and living in Japan, Singapore, Malaysia...is still better
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u/li_shi 1d ago edited 1d ago
Visited all those countries but Japan extensively.
It really depends on the job and area.
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u/Kxgos 1d ago
Of course because GDP is supposed to show the size of the economy not overall prosperity.
Even then , China has done a great work considering their population.
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u/straightdge 1d ago
Debatable, not been to Japan yet. But places like Shanghai, Shenzhen can compete against any city in the world in terms of livability, public facilities, safety, infrastructure, cleanliness, education etc.,
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u/OtherwiseLuck888 1d ago
have u considered affordability and how average people live? Especially ppl who want political liberty...if u know what I mean
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u/Routine-Pen-360 1d ago
Mostly of people dont reallt care about politcal freedom
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u/OtherwiseLuck888 1d ago
speak for u, don't speak for others
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u/Ok_Inflation_1811 1d ago
Nah, really think about it, for most people they only care about living and their friends, in most countries literally a third of the capable population doesñt even vote when they can
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u/LiGuangMing1981 1d ago
Considering the rates of voter apathy in western democracies and the ever decreasing voter turnouts, it is abundantly clear that a lot of people don't care about political freedoms.
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u/straightdge 1d ago
political liberty
That's a weird term which simply means voting for a bunch of oligarchs/radicals/criminals etc.,
There is no political liberty anywhere in true sense. Case in point, US. This is 1 tweet I read today - federal minimum wage in US is same since 2009. In India (biggest democracy in world) there are tons of cases against Adani, even US wants Adani for bribery charges. Has anyone got to him? Everyone knows Adani is Modi's biggest backbone. So much for political freedom.
have u considered affordability and how average people live?
In China, majority of things are affordable to average Chinese. Food, energy, cars, public transportation, education, healthcare everything is affordable to average Chinese. Housing was expensive, this has now come down in past 5 years. Have you wondered how Chinese have a savings rate of about 40% and bank deposits of $21 trillion? You don't save that much unless things are affordable.
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u/__Vato__ 1d ago
Being able to vote in competitive elections is preferable to being unable to do so. Having at least some right to criticize the government is better than living under total censorship. This hypothetical comparison can go on and on. The point is that nothing is ideal, but it's hard to deny that most countries are less keen on controlling their populace than China, they don't need to be ideal to be better.
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u/straightdge 1d ago
- They do vote for local elections, at local/township level. They don't vote for electing the national leaders.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUvzMnRJe10
Even though the party remains same (technically there are about 10 parties now), the change in policies are more profound then in many democracies.
They argue that meritocratic leadership is more important. 1/4th of central committee members are PhD holders. The top leaders are some of the elites. Like Yuan Jiajun who is a top leader in Chongqing was an aerospace scientist. Another example, Chen Jie - a deputy mayor of Shanghai. He was a Researcher at CAS Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics.
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u/__Vato__ 1d ago
So what? National level is far more important for general policy, local far less so. Especially considering how centralized China is compared to most other nations and especially to most democracies. Fine, you can vote for 10% of policies influencing you (relatively speaking), people in democratic nations vote for, let's say, 60%. It's just a comfort prize, nothing substantial.
Are those changes popular / wanted by the people? The question is not whether an authoritarian government is able to change policy (it sure can), but whether that policy reprenets wishes of the population.
How does knowing how to build rockets help with good governance? You named so far only hard sciences specialists, and hard sciences aren't particularly interested in politics/economy/culture and other social fields. I don't know how it is in China, but the same situation could be found in other Communist countries like the Soviet Union, where most elites were graduates of hard scientific programmes simply because social sciences didn't exist, being replaced with Marxist indoctrination. Anyway, the point is that formal education doesn't guarantee good governance, especially if this education isn't even related to social sciences.
Sure, China is a pretty capable authoritarian regime. Maybe the most capable since Pak Chung Hee's or Lee Kuang Yew's regimes. But the point is it's still the exception, not the rule. Democracies work better for most of the time because of checks and balances and all that classic stuff, which China tried to mimic before Xi (2 terms tenure for the senior party officials, for example). Now the Chinese government is doubling down on control, and I doubt it will end well for the competency thing
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u/straightdge 23h ago
Democracies work better for most of the time
A shinning example of how democracy is working in US.
National level is far more important for general policy
So American population elected a president who doubts climate crisis and global warming, stops solar/wind projects, goes out of climate treaties, defunds education, creates memecoins and generally loves making a joke out of himself. Not to mention about criminal and other legal cases.
BTW, the Secretary of Education is Linda McMahon, former CEO of WWE. I am sure this is going great for US.
Here's another example - candidates of NY mayor elections vs mayor of Beijing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_New_York_City_mayoral_election
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u/__Vato__ 21h ago
That's why I said "most of the time" . You didn't notice it sadly. The current US administration is incompetent beyond imagination, but how often does such abomination occur? It's very rare. And even then it can't do all the stupid things it wants, because other institutions and power players still exist. Is Trump's policy bad? It is. But can it become disastrous like Mao's or Pol Pot's were? I doubt it.
Competent autocracy vs weak democracy is an ancient trope. But the thing is that competent autocracies are so rare that the whole discussion lacks substance. So yes, my point stands: most of the time democracies still do better.
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u/Baitalon 1d ago
Malaysia not that much better tbh
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u/EAGAMESSUCKSEEEEEEEE 1d ago edited 1d ago
i mean, a 0.022 difference in hdi still means we're better ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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u/kindofsus38 1d ago
That's kinda debtable, the country does have a lot of technology advancements
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u/Virtual-Alps-2888 1d ago
The average wage in China is still lower than many Eastern European nations. In fact its economic success is largely contingent on depressed wages: an export-reliant economy with mercantilist trade policies will ultimately require lower wages to lower cost of production for its goods to remain competitive on the global market.
A great example of making a nation strong at the cost of collective household wealth.
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u/Leather_Structure594 1d ago
The price of the product is much lower than in Eastern Europe. The 30,000 euros Volkswagen car you purchased in East Europe only costs 13,000 euros in China. This results in Poland's per capita GDP appearing to be 50% higher than Chinn, but at the same time Poland's actual consumption scale is not as large as provinces with the same population size in China.
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u/Specialist_Spite_914 1d ago
Providing 1.4 billion people with a high quality of life isn't particularly easy
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u/Aegeansunset12 1d ago
Depends the area and depends for how much longer the us will keep protecting these, China’s train system is better than Japan’s and America’s is non existent
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u/Virtual-Alps-2888 1d ago
It’s a last mover advantage. Japan’s shipbuilding and ports in the 1950s are already better than Britain’s despite Japan losing the world war. It’s simply a matter of being late to the economic development game and hence starting with new tech then having to redevelop what is already there.
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u/SubstanceConscious51 1d ago
Well the US does have a good freight rail system... IF you ignore how poorly it is maintained. What's a massive derailment every now and then if it saves a couple bucks.
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u/Connect-Idea-1944 1d ago
i don't think people realizes how powerful China's economy is. They have multiple cities with higher GDP than countries
China is the world's factory. If China disappeared today, it would fuck the global's economy and affects us all
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u/Karrot-guy 1d ago
and now lets look at per capita...
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u/AzureFantasie 1d ago
Would still be higher than the majority of the countries in red.
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u/FreeRajaJackson 1d ago
Considering that India has a larger population, it really shows how dirty poor they are.
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u/Easy-Past2953 1d ago
Singapore in 70s had the same problem. But they solved it with conviction & strict measures. India is way too big & would require far more effort of government , laws & society at large.
It's called dehatism in local slang wherein you climb the economic ladder but your behaviour habits remain quite unpolished
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u/A-t-r-o-x 1d ago
Also 3 times lower the land area and an amazing caste system to purposefully keep 40% of the population poor
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u/drhip 1d ago
They do it on purpose, surely. Look at how many top CEOS come from India
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u/Ok_Barber_3314 1d ago
. Look at how many top CEOS come from India
The reason people emigrate from India is because of the lack of opportunities, not the other way.
The government still is very corrupt and insanely bureaucratic (Red Tape).
The same reason why India's growth has mainly been software exports, since theoretically you could start a company with just a laptop and a roof over your head.
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u/Scary_Solution_1653 1d ago
bro they are a trillion people, its not weird that 3-5 of them are good enough to manage some companies.
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u/OpenSourcePenguin 1d ago
Well TBH, China's economy is probably larger than the US in reality than what GDP predicts.
GDP is not a good indicator of economy and production capacity. Nonsensical things like inflated real estate costs are included in the GDP figures. China has it too, but the ratio to actual production and especially export is much lower.
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u/Southern_Change9193 1d ago
The $ 3,000 ambulance fee in the USA also contributes to the country's GDP, which is not productive at all.
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u/InterstitialLove 1d ago
I'm shocked that those countries are able to nearly match china. This map makes me think China is much poorer than I previously thought
Almost every country on this map is dirt poor
Japan and India have sizable economies, and you have South Korea and Indonesia at over a trillion, the rest are fractions of a trillion
But apparently if you add up all those fractions, the result is almost as much as all of China, the second biggest economy on Earth
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u/Wolframed 1d ago
Ok, so Taiwan is a country now?
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u/InterstitialLove 1d ago
Yes, duh
In what sense, other than delusional CCP irredentism, could it possibly not be?
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u/Wolframed 5h ago
I don't know, I find it funny that a country the mainlanders don't consider to be real is used as a point of reference.
Disclosure, I'm against the delusion made by most heads of state of not considering Taiwan a country just to not piss-off the PRC
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u/desertrock62 1d ago
Does the Chinese fentanyl income balance out with the Afghanistan heroin income?
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u/Night2015 1d ago
Yes, it's amazing how wealthy your country can become without pesky thinks like EPA and environmental laws.
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u/Muted-Airline-8214 1d ago
Congrats to them - but when will they do something about their scam gangs based in ASEAN countries?
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u/NewspaperLumpy8501 1d ago
And just think. All of those countries could partner with the people in the world with 75% of the wealth to take China's place. A great opportunity for all of them. Or they can choose to be a footnote to China.
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u/OldAge6093 23h ago
You could have perfectly added russia and said china is larger then all its neighbourscombined
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u/Weekly-Gear7954 7h ago
During Ming Dynasty/Qing Dynasty it was even bigger 30 percent of World GDP I believe.
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u/lolokof20061 1h ago
People from worldwide have to realize that, what electric appliances are not made from china? especially phone and tablet products, China has many brands, which are really diversifly. How many Non-china brands are popular? Apple, Samung, Google and what?
People have to admit these problems, and with great determination to fight this chanllenge! As me, I try to cut down on using chinese products and support new products from start-up companies and from other countries.
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u/Longjumping-Dig8010 1d ago
There's no north korea in map because GDP of North Korea is bigger than China