Chapter 6 Five, to the first

Angus Maddison has conducted the largest, cross-length comparative study of the world economy so far using the purchasing power parity method, and has drawn many evocative conclusions.He believes that as early as 1992, China’s economic scale surpassed that of Japan; by 2009, it surpassed the sum of the 12 old developed countries in Western Europe (UK, Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Italy, Germany, France, Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, etc.) , Austria); by 2015, it will surpass the United States; by 2030, it will be 1.13 times that of the United States.This reminds people of a passage Chairman Mao Zedong once said in 1956:

You have so many people, you have such a big land, you have so many resources, and it is said that you have developed socialism, which is said to be superior, but after 50 or 60 years, you still cannot surpass the United States. What do you look like? ?Then you will be expelled from the earth!Therefore, surpassing the United States is not only possible, but also absolutely necessary and should be done.If this is not the case, we, the Chinese nation, will be sorry to the nations of the world, and our contribution to mankind will not be great. Angus Maddison's assessment just verified Chairman Mao Zedong's prediction back then.

The 2010 report of PricewaterhouseCoopers also predicted that China will overtake the United States as the world's largest economy as early as 2020.Goldman Sachs predicted in 2003 that China's GDP would be equal to that of the United States by 2041.However, five years later, in 2008, Goldman Sachs made a similar prediction, but moved the timetable forward to 2027.The most optimistic forecast for China to surpass the United States is Robert Fogel, a Nobel laureate in economics and a professor at the University of Chicago.In 2010, he wrote an article on the US "Foreign Policy" and predicted: If calculated by purchasing power parity, by 2040, China's GDP will reach 123 trillion US dollars, equivalent to 40% of global GDP, ranking first in the world, far exceeding China's only 14% of the United States.Fogel predicts that China's per capita income will reach US$85,000 by then, more than twice that of the European Union and higher than that of Japan, but still lower than that of the United States.Fogel said, "This is the prospect of 20 or 30 years, but it is coming faster than we imagined." Why does Fogel make such an optimistic prediction?His reason is that making predictions should not only consider quantitative changes, but also qualitative changes.He believes that China has now entered the process of large-scale urbanization: "The productivity of each industrial worker is five times that of agricultural workers, which means that every labor force transferred from the countryside will create five times the productivity." It is still difficult to judge whether Fogel's forecast is reliable, but he predicted in 1999 that by 2015, the annual output of China's automobiles would reach 10 million, which was more optimistic than all economists at the time. The annual output is only 500,000 vehicles.But later developments proved that by 2009, China had become the world's largest auto production and sales country, with 13.5 million cars sold that year.

World Economic Forum Executive Chairman Klaus Schwab (Klaus Schwab) also predicted in August 2010 that by 2015, the US GDP will account for 18.3% of the global GDP, while China will account for 16.9%.Wang Tao, chief economist of UBS, believes that China's economic aggregate will surpass that of the United States in 2016 and 2018 at the latest.In her calculation, it is assumed that both China and the United States maintain roughly the current growth rates, and the RMB appreciates 5% against the U.S. dollar every year. Then China’s GDP will surpass that of the United States in 2016 and more than double that of the United States in 2021.Chinese economist Wang Jian also pointed out: China's industrial net output value surpassed that of the United States for the first time in 2009, and China's industrial added value also surpassed that of the United States to become the world's number one.From a historical point of view, the United States achieved a comprehensive surpassing of the United Kingdom in the 20 years after the industrial scale of the United States surpassed that of the United Kingdom in 1892.He predicted that the Chinese stock market will be four times that of the US by 2020.Even at the official exchange rate, most Western scholars today believe that China's economy will surpass that of the United States around 2030.

From this point of view, more and more mainstream economists in the world tend to believe that China will become the world's largest economy in at least ten years and as many as twenty years.Angus Maddison also believes that it would be unprofessional not to use purchasing power parity in today's world.I also believe that: in the past, it was a matter of seeking truth from facts to admit that China was backward, and today it is also a matter of seeking truth from facts to admit that China has made great progress.In fact, whether you like it or not, China has already ascended, or to take a step back, has been pushed to the position of "second child" in the world.We should keep our eyes open for a long time, and we may be pushed to the position of "boss" in the future. Of course, we should continue to maintain a modest and prudent attitude. Don't get carried away by the optimistic predictions of foreigners, and don't get carried away by our own rapid development.We still face many and acute challenges, but we should also do some long-term thinking to prepare for a rainy day.If China's total economic volume exceeds that of the United States, how should China behave in the world at that time, and how should it affect the future development of the world, especially the evolution of the world's economic and political order.It is better to make preparations for soft and hard power early than to be humble and give way there all the time.We need a new sense of great power.A big country needs great wisdom, great strategy, and great responsibility; it needs its own right to speak; it needs a rational and calm national mentality; it needs to reject chauvinism; it needs to make greater contributions to mankind.