China Just Overtook The US As The World's Largest Economy

China Just Overtook The US As The World's Largest Economy
Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/china-overtakes-us-as-worlds-largest-economy-2014-10#ixzz3GAyecwWR

Well, sort of! Keep in mind that the world's GDP is over $100 trillion so 1% is a lot of money.

In April the IMF predicted % of World's GDP For End of Year 2014
19.242% USA
16.055% CHINA

In Oct the IMF predicted % of World's GDP For End of Year 2014
16.277% USA
16.479% CHINA

So while China went up by 0.424%, the USA went down by nearly 3%.

China didn't overtake the USA as much as the USA fell behind China

What concerns me about China is the huge gender gap between males and females.
The one child policy and everybody wants a boy. Unfortunately many females were aborted as soon as sex could be determined.
Have there been large societies throughout history that have had a gender imbalance such as China?
I like what I am seeing in Hong Kong regarding protesting for freedom.
But I really wonder, due to the huge gender imbalance which contributes to a somewhat unstable society, maybe a repressive govt makes for a safer society.

Quote: terapined

What concerns me about China is the huge gender gap between males and females.
The one child policy and everybody wants a boy. Unfortunately many females were aborted as soon as sex could be determined.
Have there been large societies throughout history that have had a gender imbalance such as China?
I like what I am seeing in Hong Kong regarding protesting for freedom.
But I really wonder, due to the huge gender imbalance which contributes to a somewhat unstable society, maybe a repressive govt makes for a safer society.

China has become aware of this and is trying to fix it, however it is very late in the game and it will get very bad for them before it gets better. If they get wealthy China may possible become their own mail-order-bride market, probably Filipinos or from Indonesia. Africa maybe but more doubtful.

China is not as xenophobic as Japan or Korea at least as far as I can see so they may import.

Quote: terapined

... a somewhat unstable society, maybe a repressive govt makes for a safer society.

An unstable society is always the reason given for a repressive government.

Besides China's gender gap probably has been seen many times. There are massive gender gaps in Arab countries. Qatar has about 80% of it's population foreign workers and the vast majority are men. Wars must have created huge gender gaps considering how many men died.

The gender gap in china is probably going to be a relatively minor thing compared to other demographic inequalities. While the rest of the developed world has to deal with an aging society due to dropping birth rates and extended lifespans, China did it artificially in three decades. Also you are talking about urbanizing hundreds of millions of people in the next 15 years.

Alll of these demographic changes have been seen in other societies in the past. France had a huge drop in fertility in the 19th century, to the point where there were more deaths than births in the 1880's-190's. France was larger than Britain or Germany for thousands of years. USA is certainly urbanizing, and the urban population increases by up to 300,000 people per year.

But the scale of the change in China is massive. You are talking about urbanizing 3-5 million people per year. Dealing with hundreds of millions of aging people. The scale is huge not just in absolute numbers, but in percentage of the population.