My Take | Is the Asian century now behind us after years of rapid growth?
- New book by noted Chinese-American sociologist offers fair assessment of achievements by China and a sobering prognosis for the future
I once covered a press conference run by a Western human rights group releasing its latest report on China’s violations. A patriotic Chinese – not me – jumped up and declared the country had nothing to be ashamed of, but should be very proud because the communist government pulled half a billion people out of poverty in a single generation.
An angry activist from the rights group retorted that the Chinese Communist Party did nothing of the sort; the Chinese people did it themselves.
I have just finished a new book which says they were both wrong and both right. Titled China’s Age of Abundance, by Chinese-American sociologist Wang Feng, it offers many answers that I think are definitive about China’s economic “miracle” but a far gloomier prognosis.
A footnote towards the end particularly haunts me. Here, Wang compares the gross domestic growth (GDP) trajectories of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan from their rapid rise to slowdowns, and their uncanny parallels with those of China, which we are only now seeing. Also, all are experiencing depopulation.
Japan’s annual GDP growth rate averaged more than 10 per cent in the 1960s, fell to more than 4 per cent in the 1970s and 80s. In the decade after the economic bubble burst, it was just 1.5 per cent.
South Korea achieved 9.5 per cent average growth in the 60s and 10.5 per cent in the 70s. This fell to 8.9 per cent and 7.3 per cent in the next two decades.
Following the Asian financial crisis, the noughties registered just 4.7 per cent and the 2010s, 2.6 per cent.