I was thinking about what it would take for China’s economy to get far bigger than it is now, in the context of increasing their per-capita GDP (which is the primary correlate to individual prosperity).

By the back of my envelope, China has one of the most unequal societies on earth, far worse than ours. People who live in certain large cities live almost as well as we do, while hundreds of millions are near starvation. (China also has 500 million cellphone and internet users. We have 300 million total people.)

Anyway, China is trying to grow the same way that Japan and Germany did, through exports aided by an undervalued currency. The fact that our economy is now in secular decline puts a limit on China’s ability to grow this way, in addition to the simple fact that the numbers don’t work. China and India (which is trying to do largely the same thing) are together 2.5 billion people, eight times bigger than we are. Germany and Japan in the Fifties were together about 1.5 times bigger than us, and South Korea in the Sixties a small fraction of that.

300 million Americans all buying Made In China…