Is that market really relevant? They’re going to go their own way anyways. So if you’re a western government, you might as well hurt the CCP as much as possible for now. Also the Chinese economy is falling apart and I don’t know if their demand for goods will last.
Here [1] are Intel's financial reports. Check out the 2023 annual report, page 86. China is their single largest source of revenue, making up 27% (and growing) of all revenue. China's GDP growth was for 2023 was 5.2%, which was slightly above published expectations. They definitely have some real estate issues to sort out, but when the largest economy in the world, by PPP at least, is having some of the highest growth rates in the world, it is probably just slightly premature to claim that their economy is falling apart.
China's population is more than that of the US and Europe combined.
China doesn't need to reach the same GDP/capita as the West in order to attain the same level of economic power. Even with only 50% of Western GDP/capita, the Chinese economy would as large as the US and EU combined.
> The middle income trap is looking more and more a possibility.
The "middle income trap" is related to an inability to move up the value chain. Given that China already leads in many growing high-tech sectors, it already looks like China has blown past the middle income trap.
But nobody cares about who has the “largest” economy if the GDP per capita is middle income.
China has absolutely not blow past the middle income trap. 600M live on less than $140/month according to Chinese statistics.
If they hope to get anywhere close to the standard of living of developed countries they will need to quadruple the size of their economy which even at 9% would take 2 decades.
China's GDP/capita is about 12,000 USD, which is somewhere between Mexico and Poland. Average monthly income in China is about 1400 USD, which is 10x the level you cited.
The middle income trap is about countries getting stuck, because they are unable to transition from cheap manufacturing to higher-value-added industries. China has already moved into high-tech sectors in a big way, so it looks like the middle income trap is already irrelevant for China.
GDP growth figures published by e.g. the IMF are not just verbatim replications of what a country says. It comes from extensive analysis, verification, cross referencing against other data, and validation. It's why IMF data will often differ not only from what a country says, but even from what other organizations such as e.g. the World Bank or UN might say, as the latter are also independently carrying out their own similar processes. But all figures tend to fall pretty closely, because under this scrutiny it's practically impossible to meaningfully fudge things.
