China’s economy has grown significantly faster than every measure on our visual. It’s grown 14.12 times in size since 1989.
The Euro area and other high income countries, including the US, have grown much slower than China. The US economy is only 2.09 times bigger than it was in 1989. The value of the Dow Jones Industrial Average ebbs and flows with recessions, recently reaching an all-time high before contracting a little to 4.45 times the size it was 30 years ago.
No matter the economic climate, US debt levels continue to grow, almost quadrupling in inflation-adjusted dollars over the last 30 years.
We arrived at the numbers behind our visual by pulling from a few different sources. First, we grabbed GDP growth figures from the World Bank and returns from the Dow Jones Industrial Average from macrotrends. We also used the World Bank to determine high and low income countries. We found US debt numbers from The Balance. We adjusted all of these figures to reflect 2019 dollars, allowing us to create a true apples-to-apples comparison across time. This lets us measure growth rates in real terms over the last 30 years.
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China’s economy started to grow in 1989 and hasn’t let up, double in size roughly every 8 to 10 years. China’s growth rate surpassed every other measure we found, from the Dow Jones Industrial Average, to rich and poor countries, and even US debt. It’s more than 14 times as big as it was in 1989.
It’s important to keep in mind how these figures are all relative, and there are lots of other ways to measure and compare wealth between countries. For example, the debt-to-GDP ratio shows how large debt levels aren’t necessarily a bad thing if a country’s economy is likewise enormous. It’s also critical to understand how the US is still the biggest economy, by a lot. China is able to post such impressive growth numbers because it started as an agrarian economy in 1989, and then transformed into a manufacturing powerhouse.