26 April 2012

More Signs of an S-Curved Trajectory for China’s Economy?

Ruchir Sharma, “China Slows Down, and Grows Up,” New York Times, 25 April 2012.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/26/opinion/china-slows-down-and-grows-up.html

MORE than half of Americans think China is already the world’s leading economy — an astonishing misperception, given that China’s gross domestic product is still less than half of America’s. As George Orwell once observed, “Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem to be invincible.” China has grown at a breakneck pace for so long that its aura of invincibility has grown to outsize proportions in the Western imagination.

Now, however, there are signs that China’s growth is slowing to a rate that is ideal for the interests of the United States: fast enough to remain an important pillar of global economic growth, but not fast enough for China to remain a disruptive threat to American power. …

For full text access to a report that articulates this possibility and the factors underpinning it in detail, see Gabe Collins and Andrew Erickson, “China’s S-Curve Trajectory: Structural factors will likely slow the growth of China’s economy and comprehensive national power,” China SignPost™ (洞察中国), No. 44 (15 August 2011).