Emergence as a Global Economic Power } 679
economy between 1980 and 2012 compared to other major economies meas-
ured in PPP. In 1980, China’s GDP was roughly 9 percent of the United States’,
one-third Germany’s, and one-quarter of Japan’s. China surpassed Germany’s
PPP GDP in 1994 and Japan’s in 2001. By 2012, China’s economy was 79 per-
cent the size of the US economy, 2.7 times as large as Japan’s, and 3.8 times as
large as Germany’s.^6 China’s rate of growth remains much higher than that of
the United States, and China is expected to surpass the United States as the
world’s largest economy sometime in the 2020s.
Another useful comparison is between China and other large and pop-
ulous, largely agricultural, and late industrializing countries: India, Brazil,
Mexico, Indonesia, and Egypt. These countries share similar problems; mod-
ernizing such sprawling agricultural economies is an extremely difficult task.
As Figure 25-2 shows, by this measure, too, China’s post-1980 performance
has been quite good. In 1980, China’s economy was only 83 percent that of
India, 56 percent that of Brazil, and 73 percent that of Mexico. By 2012, it was
2.6 times that of India, 5.3 times as large as Brazil’s, and seven times the size
of Mexico’s economy. Indonesia and Egypt fell even further behind China. In
1980, Egypt’s economy was about a quarter the size of China’s. By 2012 it was
only 4.3 percent the size of China’s economy.^7
China’s post-1978 development lifted hundreds of millions of Chinese out
of poverty. This may prove to be one of the most important events of the late
twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. A vast region once characterized
160001400012000100008000600040002000GermanyJapanPRCUSA0
19801982198419861988199019921994199619982000200220042006200820102012US $ billions constant 2005 PPPF IGU R E 25-1 China’s Comparative GDP Growth, 1980–2012 (PPP)