Friday, December 25, 2009

China and Its Economy

China continues to move forward despite the world's economic woes. Bloomberg reports:

"Gross domestic product was 31.405 trillion yuan ($4.6 trillion) last year, the statistics bureau said at a briefing in Beijing today. That compares with a previous 30.067 trillion yuan and the World Bank’s estimate of $4.9 trillion for Japan."

The People's Daily also states:

"China has revised its gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate for 2008 to 9.6 percent from 9 percent, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said today. That raised GDP for 2008 to 31.4045 trillion yuan from the previous figure of 30.067 trillion yuan, NBS director Ma Jiantang told a press conference. The new figure amounted to about 4.59 trillion U.S. dollars, at the exchange rate on Dec. 31 of 2008. The revised volume for the agriculture sector was 3.3702 trillion yuan, accounting for 10.7 percent of GDP, down from 3.4 trillion yuan. The figure for the industrial sector was put at 14.9003 trillion yuan, accounting for 47.5 percent of GDP, was larger than the earlier figure of 14.6183 trillion yuan. The service sector figure was 13.1340 trillion yuan, accounting for 41.8 percent of GDP. It was up from 12.0487 trillion yuan.


The GDP for the US as of 1-1-2008 was $14.44 trillion. However China also seems to be making great strides in energy efficiency. As reported by the National Bureau of Statistics of China they state:

"In 2008, the total output of primary energy was 2.65 billion tons of standard coal equivalent, of which, the output of coal was 2.8 billion tons (in kind); that of crude oil, 195.05 million tons; natural gas, 80.3 billion cubic meters. The total energy consumption was 2.91 billion tons of standard coal equivalent. By the end of 2008, of the total industrial enterprises above designated size, 48,637 enterprises conducted science and technology activities, accounting for 11.6 percent; 27,278 enterprises conducted R&D activities, accounting for 6.5 percent; there were 3,092 thousand people engaged in science and technology activities, up by 68.2 percent over that in 2004.

The total input in science and technology activities reached 594.17 billion yuan, up by 147.4 percent over that in 2004; of this total, the input in research and development (R&D) activities which represent the independent innovative capacity of enterprises totaled 307.31 billion yuan, up by 178.2 percent over that in 2004. The intensity of the input in R&D was 0.61 percent, and it was higher than that in 2004, which stood at 0.56 percent.

Among the large and medium-sized enterprises, 37.1 percent of them were engaged in science and technology activities, and 24.9 percent were engaged in R&D activities. The total input in R&D reached 268.13 billion yuan, the intensity of input was 0.84 percent, and it was higher than that in 2004, which was 0.71 percent.

The information such as: water consumption, status of informationization, education attainments, technical titles, and skill degrees of employees, and share-holding status, jurisdiction and business birth record of enterprises were all covered by the census.

Meanwhile, according to the accounting system of and the results from the Second National Economic Census, as well as in line with international convention, the preliminary estimates of 2008 GDP have been revised. The main results are: The total GDP was 31,404.5 billion yuan in 2008, of this total, the value added of the primary industry was 3,370.2 billion yuan, accounting for 10.7 percent of the total GDP; that of the secondary industry was 14,900.3 billion yuan, accounting for 47.5 percent of total GDP; that of the tertiary industry was 13,134.0 billion yuan, accounting for 41.8 percent of total GDP.

In addition, according to the results from the economic census, the total energy consumption in the year 2008 has been revised to 2.91 billion tons of standard coal equivalent, which was 2.12 percent higher than the originally released preliminary data. Revisions have also been made accordingly to total energy consumption figures for the period of 2005 to 2007. Basing on the revised energy consumption data from 2006 to 2008 and GDP estimate of 2008, the unit energy consumption of GDP for the year of 2008 was down by 5.2 percent over that in the previous year, or 12.45 percent lower than that in the year 2005."

China stands to make great progress in the next ten years. If they continue to grow at this rate and if the US manages to destroy its entrepreneurial base, by 2020 we expect the Chinese GDP to exceed that of the US.