{"id":368063,"date":"2010-02-26T10:20:15","date_gmt":"2010-02-26T15:20:15","guid":{"rendered":"tag:www.economist.com,21005039"},"modified":"2010-02-26T10:20:15","modified_gmt":"2010-02-26T15:20:15","slug":"eastward-ho","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/368063","title":{"rendered":"Eastward ho?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The lead note<\/a> in the Finance & Economics section in this week’s issue looks at the shift in the balance of economic power from the West to Asia. Our correspondent crunches some numbers, and clarifies the ways in which this much-talked about shift is real, and the ways in which it is exaggerated. It turns out, for instance, that looking at GDP at market exchange rates, there hasn’t been that much of a shift at all:<\/p>\n

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Thanks partly to falling currencies, Asia\u2019s total share of world GDP (in nominal terms at market exchange rates) has actually slipped, from 29% in 1995 to 27% last year (see chart 1). In 2009 Asia\u2019s total GDP exceeded America\u2019s but was still slightly smaller than western Europe\u2019s (although it could overtake the latter this year). To put it another way, the output of the rich West is still almost twice as big as that of the East.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That Asian exports are somehow taking over the world is also not as true as some suppose:<\/p>\n

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As for the popular belief that Asian producers are grabbing an ever-larger slice of exports, the region\u2019s 31% share of world exports last year was not much higher than in 1995 (28%) and remains smaller than western Europe\u2019s. Indeed, the shift towards Asia appears to have slowed, not quickened.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Of course, converted at purchasing-power-parity, Asia’s GDP share looks more impressive. And although official statistics may say America’s share of private consumption dwarfs Asia, the piece points out that it may be bigger in reality than captured by official figures. But it’s Asia’s demand for capital goods that really stands out:<\/p>\n

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Many Western firms are more interested in Asia\u2019s capital spending than its consumption, and here Asia is undoubtedly the giant. In 2009, 40% of global investment (at market exchange rates) took place in Asia, as much as in America and Europe combined.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Lots more interesting stuff in the piece itself, here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The lead note in the Finance & Economics section in this week’s issue looks at the shift in the balance of economic power from the West to Asia. Our correspondent crunches some numbers, and clarifies the ways in which this much-talked about shift is real, and the ways in which it is exaggerated. It turns […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5692,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-368063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5692"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368063\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}