China passes UK to become the #4 strongest world economy

[MazeRat7]

Seems that while we have been mucking about trying to bring "democracy" to the world... others have been busy trying to improve , or should I say "increase", the size of their proverbial economic stick. All things being equal, at the end of the day who is on the SCOTUS, who is in control of congress, and what kind of pResident we have will become secondary talking points when we are no longer the top economic power. Of course, New Zealand and Switzerland aren't in the top 5 either and quite frankly I think they would be fine places to live. But I digress....

The point being for this post is - if you want wound a repug to their soul... forget about arguing Iraq, corruption, etc... make the case that the current administration has failed to protect "our true source of power and freedom" that being our "economic base". Remember the old addage... "money can't buy you love... but it sure can by you freedom." That is very true when talking about geo-political influence and security. Anyway...pointing out these stats from (oh forbid - a commie country) China are indicative of this administrations failure. Why ? Without getting into the sleepy-time discussions on global economies, lets just "generalize" and say the bulk of China's growth for the past several years is mostly due to the weakness or lack of our own economic growth. Pay particular attention to the third bullet point showing they actually had a trade surplus... we didn't. Beyond that, the first two points about GDP growth being 6-7+ percentage points higher than our own is just fuel for the fire. Rhetorically speaking.. *grin.


So here are the key points from the article: http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?pp_cat=2&art_id=10795&sid=6384425&con_type=1

* China's economy surged 9.9 percent last year, putting it in fourth place behind the United States, Japan and Germany on the back of record exports and rising capital investment.

* since 2002, annual GDP growth has averaged more than 9.1 percent, a pace that becomes more remarkable the larger and more diverse the economy becomes.

* China's trade surplus increased from US$69.9 billion to US$101.9 billion last year. Its foreign exchange reserves expanded by US$208.9 billion to US$818.9 billion.

Anyway, I hope you all found this information to be valuable and be sure to tuck it away for easy "spouting" during your next friendly freeper encounter....

MZr7

[tritsofme]

1. 60 million people in the UK vs 1.5 billion in China

Not that big of a shocker.

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. And that on the official exchange rates

Using purchasing power parity exchange rates, which I think are a better measure of 'strength' of economy in the long term (because inequalities in the prices of goods will be a driver in future exchange rates), they're already 2nd, with India 4th (and likely to overtake Japan for 3rd in 2006):

http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/rankorder/2001rank.html

Brazil might overtake Italy this year too.

Another thing to note - Iran's economy is 60% bigger than Saudi Arabia's, and not that far behind Australia. It's not some struggling backwater country that Bush is waggling his weapon at.