China Can Grow at 8% for Twenty Years

This is the important information one needs to understand what is happening in China.  The same holds true for India, although they will lag several years behind until the disparity of  historic birthrates shifts the economic growth in favor of India and allows it to catch up.

As I have posted before, these spectacular growth rates are a result of sound management that is generally capable enough not to blindly steal and the mere fact that all the knowledge exists to build a modern society just for the asking.  Japan, Taiwan, Korea, China and India have never had to invent a steel mill.  Because of that every step of development comes off the shelf to take advantages of the lower wage structure.  This why the move up the S curve is now so spectacular.

This all means that by no later than 2040, a minimum of half of the world’s population will be fully modern.  A further third will be at best a generation behind and will swiftly close the remaining gap.

That leaves the balance, mostly in the Islamic world to consider.  The prerequisite for real growth is always universal education that is modern enough to prepare individuals for the developed world.  This also means that all women are also so educated and the fact remains that this continues to be a nasty issue everywhere in the Islamic world.  Even Japan sorted it out enough to get by.

The only other source of global conflict is the ongoing prohibition war against drug traffickers which could be ended with the stroke of a pen and the application of common sense.

Also the clock is running out in the Islamic world itself.  The oil bonanza which has allowed these states to be well armed aristocracies is about to simply end.  All these states will immediately find themselves bereft of capital and in desperate straits.  The only way out will be to immediately transition into a modern state.  The Arab Spring is a bit about all that.  I can not see it been quick although the final outcome is inevitable however resisted by traditional forces.

World Bank Chief Economist Justin Yifu Lin says China can grow at 8% per year for another 20 years

NOVEMBER 29, 2011

http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/11/world-bank-chief-economist-justin-yifu.html

China can continue its dynamic economic growth for at least another 20 years, although it needs to embark on an overhaul that removes internal imbalances in its economy and society, World Bank Chief Economist Justin Yifu Lin said in a speech here Tuesday. This is the same presentation he gave in March 2011. (16 pages)

China's "backwardness" in terms of economic development still leaves it far behind developed countries, Lin said, noting that in relative terms to the U.S., the country is at the level of Japan in 1951, Korea in 1977, and Taiwan in 1975. He said that in the 20 subsequent years after each of those dates, the economies of those three Asian countries expanded at rates of 9.2%, 7.6% and 8.3%, respectively.

"China has the potential to achieve another 20 years of 8% growth," Lin said, addressing an audience at a conference on the Asia-Pacific economy sponsored by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. "By that time, China's per capita income measured in purchasing power parity may reach about 50% of U.S. per capita income." He added that China's economy would then be twice the size of the U.S.'s when measured in purchasing power parity and the same size as the U.S. when measured in market exchange rates.

World Bank Chief Economist Justin Yifu Lin spoke at the Beijing Forum on the topic China’s Economic Development and Cultural Renaissance in the Multipolar Growth World of the 21st Century