Chinese growth in words and pictures

Statistics about the speed of China’s development never cease to be amazing, no matter how many times you read them. Here is another one; in the dark days of 2009 the Chinese economy grew by yet another 8.7% (10.7% in the final quarter of the year) so that it is now set to overtake Japan, which probably shrank by 6% over the same period, to be the world’s second largest economy. And yet, according to Ma Jiantang, head of the National Bureau of Statistics, there are still 150 million people in China living on $1 a day and so poor according to the UN’s standard rating. This gives a remarkable contrast as the world’s second or third largest economy is also a developing nation with enormous conflicts and trade-offs in macroeconomic policy to resolve. Mr Ma also referred to the concerns about inflation in China - he said price rises were “mild and under control”, but over recent days the government has tried to limit the amount of loans made by the country’s banks in order to avoid a ‘domestic bubble’ of growth. This is the focus of the Times’ report, which highlights expectations that there may be a rise in interest rates in China in the next two months.

In this report Chris Hogg of the BBC compares Chinese and Japanese industry, and asks whether China can match the reputation for quality that Japanese exports have earned. Competition between the two countries will intensify as Chinese firms move up the value chain and start manufacturing more products for markets that Japan would once have never expected them to compete in. Meanwhile, this BBC resource has a fascinating set of images tracing aspects of China’s development from 1949 to the present.