The GDP gap between China and the United States has widened further: What is the difference behind the fact that US GDP has fallen to 65%?
The GDP gap has widened again.
Not long ago, the United States released its 2023 report with a GDP of 2773 trillion yuan, an increase of 25%。
Previously, we also released economic data for 2023 with a GDP of 12606 trillion yuan, with an average annual growth rate of 52%, since the official GDP converted into dollars is not announced, we calculate it at the average exchange rate for the whole year, which becomes 1789 trillion yuan.
So, one"Strange"The question arises:
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 that of China48 trillion yuan, China's GDP is only 65 of the United States36%, compared to 76% in 2021 and 70% in 2022, the gap is widening.
Of course, China's economy is growing faster than the United States, so why is the gap widening? How big is the GDP gap between China and the United States?
There are two main reasons for this, one is inflation and the other is the exchange rate.
In general, countries publish nominal GDP that includes inflation-driven products**, while growth rates are real growth rates in order to remove the effects of inflation from the data.
What does that mean?
Let's say you're a refrigerator manufacturer, and you used to sell 500 units a year for 2,000 yuan.
But this year, the price **, the workers demanded a raise, so he had to raise the ** of the refrigerator to 3000 yuan, but he was still able to sell 500 units a year.
So, in terms of nominal GDP, there was an increase of 500,000 yuan this year, but in fact 500 refrigerators were sold, and the real GDP did not change, that is, the real growth rate was zero.
The same is true of the GDP gap between China and the United States: last year the United States experienced inflation, and China's CPI was already on the verge of deflation, so even if the nominal GDP of the United States is much higher than that of China, it is affected by inflation, which means that there is a lot of it"moisture"。
Let's talk about inflation first, and then look at the exchange rate.
In 2021, China's GDP accounted for 76% of that of the United States, and one of the important factors that cannot be ignored was the significant appreciation of the RMB exchange rate that year.
However, in the past two years, due to the Fed's continuous aggressive interest rate hikes, the yuan index has continued to strengthen, and the RMB exchange rate has come under pressure, even falling to close to 73。
Therefore, if we convert our GDP into dollars, exchange rate fluctuations will inevitably make us"Losses"A lot.
Therefore, under the dual influence of inflation and exchange rate, the GDP gap between China and the United States"Pull it up"This is not surprising, just because prices and exchange rates fluctuate and do not have much practical significance.
Frankly, the gap in GDP between China and the United States is real, and it will take time for China to catch up with the United States, but this can only be used as a rough comparison due to the fundamental differences in the GDP composition of China and the United States.
Specifically, in terms of the proportion of industry in our calculation of GDP, it is generally divided into three major industries, namely, agriculture in the primary industry, industry and construction in the secondary industry, and distribution and services in the tertiary industry.
In 2023, the added value of China's primary industry will be 8,975.5 billion yuan, accounting for 712%；The added value of the secondary industry was 482589 billion yuan, accounting for 38 percent of GDP28%；The added value of the tertiary industry was 68823800 million yuan, or 54 percent of GDP6%。
While all specific data for 2023 in the US has not yet been released, we can use 2022 data as a reference:
In 2022, the U.S. primary industry accounted for only 105%, the secondary sector accounts for 1801%, the tertiary sector accounts for 80% of GDP94%。
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 a country's tertiary industry, the better the economy, and many developed countries, including the United States, have a high proportion of GDP in the service sector.
However, if only the low-end manufacturing is transferred, it will lead to another problem - the hollowing out of the industry, which is why the United States has spared no effort to bring the manufacturing industry back in recent years.
The huge tertiary industry also brought one"Advantages:": Easier"Irrigation"。
For example, in the United States, there is a kind of private service consumption called self-housing virtual rent, but the so-called"Virtual rentals"It's not really the rent you charge for renting a house, it's about how much rent you can charge if you live in a house that you live in by yourself at market rent.
Even if the house is not rented out, this income can bring more than $2 trillion to the U.S. GDP annually, or more than 7% of the total GDP.
As a result, the U.S. has been able to hold on despite declining electricity consumption and tax revenues"High"economic growth, just as India counts cow dung as part of GDP.
The GDP gap between the U.S. and China is"Pull it up", some people are shouting online again:
China's economy has peaked, our economy is no longer able to surpass the United States, and it is a joke that China's total GDP will surpass that of the United States by 2030.
But in fact, we have already pointed out that the so-called widening gap between China's GDP and the United States is just a game of numbers affected by inflation and exchange rates, and the real growth rate is far ahead of that of the United States.
If we take into account the purchasing power parity (PPP) statistics, i.e., the elimination of exchange rates and ** differences, then according to the World Bank, China will eventually overtake the United States in 2022, with a specific figure of 31 for China5 trillion yuan, 229 trillion yuan.
Of course, if China's GDP surpasses that of the United States, China will have some difficulties.
It's just that the United States is in"Irrigation"The field is indeed far ahead, and it only needs to add trillions of dollars of unreasonable spending at will to make its GDP numbers rise.
From this point of view, it is not really meaningful to compare GDP alone, because GDP contains a lot of water and bubbles, and it is difficult to fully reflect the real economic situation of a country.