"Nihon Keizai Shimbun" pointed out in its report that despite its
many years of sustained and fast development, China's current
economic development level is only equivalent to that of Japan's in
the early 1960s. The Japan-led Asian "wild geese flying" economic
development model has been shifted to China, with Shanghai as the
pioneer of economic development.
"Nihon Keizai Shimbun" pointed out in its report that despite its
many years of sustained and fast development, China's current
economic development level is only equivalent to that of Japan's in
the early 1960s. The Japan-led Asian "wild geese flying" economic
development model has been shifted to China, with
Shanghai as the pioneer of economic development.
The report of the said newspaper came to the above conclusion
through a comparative analysis of a whole series of data. Under the
circumstance that the "theory of Chinese economic threat" is
currently heard without end in Japan, this news report shows the
large gap between Chinese and Japanese economies.
The report noted China's per-capita GDP averaged US$855 in 2000,
equivalent only to Japan's 1964 level; the rapidly growing
per-capita annual power consumption, resulted from the fast
popularization of household electrical appliances, is approaching
Japan's 1960 level; China's male and female average life span, and
the infant mortality rate, which both represent the nutrition
condition and medical care level, are same as Japan's 1965 and 1960
levels respectively.
Last year, Japan's Trade White Paper noted for the first time that
China's development had caused the collapse of the Asian "wild
geese flying" model. However, the report quoted Guan Zhixiong, a
researcher with Japan's economic industry research institute, as
saying that the "wild geese flying" model has been shifted to
China. Like Asian countries and regions following closely Japan's
"wild geese flying" development, China has formed a Shanghai-led
"wild geese flying" model of development from the coastal areas to
the inland.
The report compared the Chinese and Japanese economies to show the
gap between the two in the form of a table. In 2000. China's GDP
was only one-fourth of Japan's, its per-capita GDP, one-44th, and
its per-capita power consumption, one-sixth of Japan's.
( January 11, 2002)