The Chinese economy outperformed the Japanese economy for the first time in the first half of 2010. And all indications are that this Asian economy will also surpass that of the United States by the end of the next decade. The World Bank has also set a specific date for this: The year 2020. This country, which has a great export and import potential, has attracted the attention of several Basque companies several years ago, such as the Mondragon Cooperative Group, which has already established several industrial plants there. Subsequently, other Basque companies took the path of Mondragón and are already doing business in these areas. Last September, a delegation of UAE Chambers of Commerce traveled to China to explore business opportunities and reach agreements with several Chinese companies.

USA, China and Japan: the three powers of the world

The Chinese economy has experienced steady growth since Den Xiaoping initiated reforms in 1978. And this growth has been much higher than the average of the world economy. The following are some of the facts that ensure and make predictions of growing dominance: export leadership; the growing relative importance of value-added productions, far from simple labour-intensive manufactures alone; the importance of international reserves; the potential flow of foreign direct investment; growing control over the production of raw materials; the capitalization achieved by various Chinese companies, etc.
As a result, China’s economy has surpassed Japan’s in size in 2010.Japan’s nominal GDP reached $1.2 trillion in the second quarter of the year, while China’s was $1.337 trillion. In the first half of the year, however, Japan’s GDP was higher than that of China (5.05 trillion Japanese and 4.9 trillion Chinese). The progress of the Chinese economy is unstoppable and the recovery of the Japanese economy remains very fragile, threatened by deflation, public debt and weak domestic demand.
The attached table contains the global GDP classification. Only the US is above China with a GDP of 14.6 trillion dollars. China’s GDP, year after year, is moving away from the GDP of Japan, Germany, France and the United Kingdom. Even more so from the Spanish GDP, which stands at 1.37 trillion dollars and is the 12th in the world ranking.

China still in development

Despite the high figures of the Chinese economy, the country with 1.4 billion inhabitants is still developing. And this thesis is not of foreign inspectors who observe the Chinese economy and reality, but of its leaders. This was stated last July by Jao Jian, spokesman of the Chinese Ministry of Commerce: “More efforts are needed to improve the economic quality and standard of living of the population. In addition to total GDP, we should also be concerned about GDP per capita.”

Some representative data

Despite the fact that there are more luxury cars in China than in many millionaires and European capitals, the annual per capita income of Chinese people ($3,600) is much lower than that of Japan ($37,800) or the United States ($42,240). Beijing has sent two manned missions into space, but 150 million people still live below the poverty line, according to the United Nations scale. Therefore, in the 2009 global GDP per capita ranking, China ranked 103rd between Angola and El Salvador, according to World Bank data. Japan was the 22nd.