The GDP gap has widened again.
Some time ago, the United States released its report card for 2023, with a total GDP of 2773 trillion US dollars, a year-on-year increase of 25%。
Previously, my country also announced its economic data for 2023, with a GDP of 12606 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 52%, since the official GDP converted into US dollars is not announced, we calculate it according to the average exchange rate for the whole year, and the converted is 17$89 trillion.
Then a "strange" question arises here:
China's GDP growth rate is higher than that of the United States, but the GDP of the United States is 9 percent higher than ours48 trillion US dollars, China's GDP is only equivalent to 65 of the United States36%, compared with 76% in 2021 and 70% in 2022, the gap has widened.
Obviously, China's economy is growing faster than that of the United States, why is the gap widening further? What is the difference between the GDP of China and the United States?
There are two main reasons, one is inflation and the other is the exchange rate.
Generally, when countries announce their GDP, they are nominal GDP, which includes the impact of inflation on prices, but the growth rate is the real growth rate, which is the data after excluding the impact of inflation.
What does that mean?
For example, if you are a refrigerator manufacturer, you used to sell 2,000 yuan for a refrigerator, and you can sell 500 units per year.
But this year, prices have risen, and workers are also clamoring for wage increases, so you have to raise the refrigerator** to 3,000 yuan, but you still sell 500 units a year.
So from the nominal GDP point of view, it has risen by 500,000 yuan this year, but in fact, 500 refrigerators have been sold, and the actual GDP has not changed, that is, the actual growth rate is 0.
The same is true of the GDP gap between China and the United States, the United States has been in a state of inflation last year, while China's CPI has been hovering on the verge of deflation, so although the nominal GDP of the United States is much higher than that of China, it is affected by inflation and has a lot of "moisture".
After talking about inflation, let's look at the exchange rate.
In 2021, China's GDP accounted for 76% of the United States, and an important factor that cannot be ignored is the sharp appreciation of the RMB exchange rate that year.
However, in the past two years, due to the Federal Reserve's aggressive interest rate hikes, the dollar index has continued to strengthen, and the RMB exchange rate has been under pressure, once falling to 73 nearby.
Therefore, if we convert our country's GDP into US dollars, we will virtually "suffer" a lot due to exchange rate fluctuations.
Therefore, it is not surprising that the GDP gap between China and the United States has "widened" under the dual influence of inflation and exchange rates, but since prices and exchange rates are fluctuating, this has no practical significance.
Frankly speaking, the GDP gap between China and the United States is real, and it will take time for China to catch up with the United States, but because there are fundamental differences in the composition of GDP between China and the United States, it can only be used as an approximate comparison.
Specifically, in terms of the proportion of industries, when we count GDP, it is generally divided into three major industries, namely primary industry agriculture, secondary industry industry and construction, tertiary industry circulation and service industry.
In 2023, the added value of China's primary industry will be 8,975.5 billion yuan, accounting for 7% of GDP12%, the added value of the secondary industry 482589 billion yuan, accounting for 38 percent of GDP28%, the added value of the tertiary industry 688238 billion yuan, accounting for 54% of GDP6%。
The specific data of the United States in 2023 has not yet been released, and we can use the data in 2022 as a reference:
In 2022, the U.S. primary industry accounted for only 105%, and the secondary sector accounts for 1801%, while the tertiary industry accounts for as much as 8094%。
In other words, unlike China's manufacturing and service industries, which jointly drive economic growth, the United States mainly relies on the tertiary industry, that is, the service industry, to achieve economic growth.
Generally speaking, the higher the proportion of the tertiary industry in a country, the better the economy, and many developed countries, including the United States, have a high proportion of GDP in the service sector.
However, blindly transferring the low-end manufacturing industry will lead to a problem - the hollowing out of the industry, which is also the reason why the United States has spared no effort to engage in the return of manufacturing in recent years.
Moreover, the tertiary industry accounts for a relatively high proportion, and at the same time, it will also bring an "advantage":It's easier to "irrigate".
For example, there is a clause in the consumption of private services in the United States called virtual rent for self-owned housing, but the so-called "virtual rent" is not the real rent of the house to collect rent, but the rent of the house that American residents live in if it is rented out according to the market.
Even if the house is not rented out, this part of the income is included in the GDP, and this alone can contribute more than $2 trillion to the GDP of the United States every year, accounting for more than 7% of the total GDP.
So despite the decline in electricity consumption and tax revenues, the United States has been able to maintain "high-speed" economic growth, which is the same reason that India has included cow dung in its GDP.
The GDP gap between China and the United States is "getting bigger and bigger", and some people are shouting on the Internet again:
China's economy has peaked, and our economy will never surpass the United States in size, and it is a joke that China's total GDP will surpass that of the United States in 2030.
But in fact, as we mentioned earlier, the so-called widening gap between China and the United States GDP is just a numbers game affected by inflation and exchange rates, and our actual growth rate is far higher than that of the United States.
If it is calculated in the way of purchasing power parity statistics that eliminate the difference between exchange rates and prices, then according to the statistics of the World Bank, in fact, China has completed the surpassing of the United States in 2022, and the specific data is 31 for China5 trillion dollars, 22 in the United States9 trillion dollars.
Of course, if China's GDP surpasses that of the United States, it will be difficult.
Because in terms of "irrigation", the United States is indeed far ahead, and if it wants to increase GDP data, it only needs to add a random amount of unwarranted expenditure, that is, trillions of dollars.
From this point of view, comparing GDP alone is actually of little practical significance, there is a lot of moisture and bubbles in it, and it is difficult to fully reflect the actual economic situation of a country.
Write at the end:
The so-called widening gap between the GDP of China and the United States is itself a false proposition, and the theory that China's economy has peaked is even more nonsense.
Although there is still a gap between our economic aggregate and the United States in a short period of time, this does not mean that we have lost hope of catching up, on the contrary, China has never stopped catching up with the United States. Kunpeng Project