China Ballistic Missiles and Nuclear Arms Thread

[plawolf]

Both sides seems to be cherry picking maths a little here.

Assuming we accept the very dodgy Indian 7.75% growth figure for the sake of argument. It means that compared to China's 6.33% growth, India's economy is growing faster.

However, because of China's vastly larger base economy size, at 11,211bn, China would have grown by 709.72bn for the year verses India's 178.87bn growth.

China's economy grew by more, but India's grew faster.

So technically, India is catching up with China. But only at a snail's pace.

If those growth rates were locked in, it would take 120 years for India's economy to be bigger than China's.

By 2020, India would have gone from 20.59% of China's GDP to 22%. If India wants to throw a dance party about that, well, be my guest.

But the giant problem with all of this is trying to draw such grandiose trend assumptions from such pitiful evidence.

The only thing anyone could reasonable conclude from so little data is not the underlying economic performance being discussed, but rather the prejudices of the people seeking to draw conclusions from nothing.

It should also be noted that military might lags behind GDP, because military power is accumulated cumulatively through a long period of time.

Case in point, China is projected to have a bigger economy than America's in as little as 5 years' time, but by no estimate would Chinese military power approach parity with America's for many decades beyond that point.

To keep comparing India to China is to do both a grave disservice.

For China, it's disrespectful to be compared to such an economic and technological minnow as if the two were equals.

For India, it's complacent to be implicitly elevated to a position far beyond what they have achieved and earned, thereby deflating a great deal of the near panic levels of urgency and a drive to catch up that Indians should be feeling about how far ahead China has pulled.

One of the key reasons to China's success is precisely because the entire Chinese civilisation felt such an overwhelming sense of urgency and drive to catch up because of how far they were behind the west.

Indians seems to keep expecting someone to hand them their 'rightful place' on a silver platter with a pretty pink bow on top without them having to do any actual work to earn it.

Chinese are desperately fighting and scraping to get to where they think they should be, and are secretly terrified that if they don't give 110%, they might fall short of their goal.

The daydreamer may get handed everything he ever dreamed or, and the scrapper may still fall short, such is life. But the smart money is on the scrapper.

 

[solarz]

China's economy grew by more, but India's grew faster.

So technically, India is catching up with China. But only at a snail's pace.

No, it doesn't.

Suppose Person A earns a salary of $100k per year and Person B earns $50k per. If A gets a raise of 6% every year, and B gets a raise of 8% every year, would B ever catch up with A in annual salary? No, he wouldn't.

In order for B to catch up with A, he needs a raise greater than that of A *in absolute value*. That is, if A gets a raise of $6000 a year, then B needs to get a raise greater than $6000 a year.

So in order for India to even *start* catching up with China, its GDP growth *percentage* needs to be greater than China's percentage by a factor equal to the total Chinese GDP divided by Indian GDP.

Right now, China's GDP is 5 times that of India, and is growing at 6.8%. In order for India to catch up, it would need to grow at a whooping 35%! And note that if India's growth rate is less than that, it would need an even bigger rate the next year!

The only realistic scenario for India to start catching up is if China's growth dropped to first-nation levels (i.e. 0-2%), which would likely mean China would have an economy 4 times the size of the US.

 

[Engineer]

China's economy grew by more, but India's grew faster.

So technically, India is catching up with China. But only at a snail's pace.

China's economy grew by more means India's economy is NOT growing faster. For the same reason, India is falling behind, not catching up.

 

[plawolf]

Actually, in your example, B would catch up to A, but it will take a very long time. Whether they both live long enough to see that day come is a totally different question. But since countries don't have life expectancies like people, that's not really a factor that would apply here anyways.

A's salary will grow by a bigger absolute nominal amount, but B's salary will grow at a faster rate. Remember, the growth rates are already relative to the original salary of both, so are controlled and comparable (the whole point of having GDP growth rates!).

You seem to be confusing net annual growth value with growth rate.

I have no idea where your requirement for dividing up GDPs came from, but a simply logic test would prove it to be wrong.

In 1970, US GDP was 1,075bn, China's was 89bn, so by your workings, China would have had to have grown 12 times faster than America to make any headway! Clearly that's nonsense.

Just open up excel, set the base GDP/salary and the growth rates, apply a simple equation and drag down to see for yourself.

The math doesn't lie, run the figures yourself if you don't believe me.

 

[manqiangrexue]

Uh... Wolf is right. You guys are a little bit off on your math. If India locks in at 8% and China locks in at 6%, India would eventually catch up to China no matter how small it started out. Technically, an economy of $1 growing at 5% would eventually overtake an economy of $100000 growing at 4.99%; it would just take long enough for the species to die out first LOL. This principle is how China's economy could overtake America's economy even though China's GDP was minuscule compared to that of the US 30 years ago. America's economy didn't get smaller; it just got bigger at a slower rate. At first, even though China's economy was growing on the order of 15% annually, the absolute value added was still less than that of the US growing at 5% annually because America's economy was much more than triple the size of China's. But eventually, the compound effect of several larger percentages multiplied to each other (15% of 100, then 15% of 115, then, 15% of 172.5, etc...) caused the Chinese economy to get large enough for the absolute value of its 15% to be greater than the absolute value of America's 5%. That's when the absolute value gap started to shrink. Instead of thinking about slope, think about derivatives and you will see (think back to calculus).

If you have a graphing calculator, draw 100x1.15^30 vs 1000x1.05^30 and you will see the curves first pull apart with the larger economy taking off faster, then come together and pull apart again with the smaller one on top forever from there. 100(size of smaller economy)x1.15(15% growth)^30(over 30 years) is 6621 while 1000(size of larger economy by 10 fold)x1.05(5% growth)^30(over 30 years) is 4322.

The problem with predicting using this model is that rates are never locked in and certainly, you cannot predict how fast something will be growing 20 years.

 

[solarz]

Actually, in your example, B would catch up to A, but it will take a very long time. Whether they both live long enough to see that day come is a totally different question. But since countries don't have life expectancies like people, that's not really a factor that would apply here anyways.

A's salary will grow by a bigger absolute nominal amount, but B's salary will grow at a faster rate. Remember, the growth rates are already relative to the original salary of both, so are controlled and comparable (the whole point of having GDP growth rates!).

You seem to be confusing net annual growth value with growth rate.

I have no idea where your requirement for dividing up GDPs came from, but a simply logic test would prove it to be wrong.

In 1970, US GDP was 1,075bn, China's was 89bn, so by your workings, China would have had to have grown 12 times faster than America to make any headway! Clearly that's nonsense.

Just open up excel, set the base GDP/salary and the growth rates, apply a simple equation and drag down to see for yourself.

The math doesn't lie, run the figures yourself if you don't believe me.

Sure, let's work out the figures:

Person A: 100,000 starting salary, 6% raise per year
Person B: 50,000 starting salary, 8% raise per year



As you can clearly see, the gap is between A and B is widening.

As for US vs China, it's not hard to grow 12 times faster when one of them is growing at 0% or has a negative growth rate.

In 2008 and 2009 especially, US growth was negative while China had 9% growth.

 

[solarz]

Just for fun, here's a hypothetical comparison between countries A and B, where country A is experiencing slowing growth and country B is experiencing accelerating growth:



As you can see, even at these hypothetically inflated values, country B is still lagging further behind country A.

 

[AssassinsMace]

Maybe the moderators should move this derailing discussion how India is superior to all countries Ultra started to another thread. Yes India has better growth than the US ergo India is about to catch-up and surpass the US and be king of the world.

 

[solarz]

Uh... Wolf is right. You guys are a little bit off on your math. If India locks in at 8% and China locks in at 6%, India would eventually catch up to China no matter how small it started out. Technically, an economy of $1 growing at 5% would eventually overtake an economy of $100000 growing at 4.99%; it would just take long enough for the species to die out first LOL. This principle is how China's economy could overtake America's economy even though China's GDP was minuscule compared to that of the US 30 years ago. America's economy didn't get smaller; it just got bigger at a slower rate. At first, even though China's economy was growing on the order of 15% annually, the absolute value added was still less than that of the US growing at 5% annually because America's economy was much more than triple the size of China's. But eventually, the compound effect of several larger percentages multiplied to each other (15% of 100, then 15% of 115, then, 15% of 172.5, etc...) caused the Chinese economy to get large enough for the absolute value of its 15% to be greater than the absolute value of America's 5%. That's when the absolute value gap started to shrink. Instead of thinking about slope, think about derivatives and you will see (think back to calculus).

If you have a graphing calculator, draw 100x1.15^30 vs 1000x1.05^30 and you will see the curves first pull apart with the larger economy taking off faster, then come together and pull apart again with the smaller one on top forever from there. 100(size of smaller economy)x1.15(15% growth)^30(over 30 years) is 6621 while 1000(size of larger economy by 10 fold)x1.05(5% growth)^30(over 30 years) is 4322.

The problem with predicting using this model is that rates are never locked in and certainly, you cannot predict how fast something will be growing 20 years.

Yes, actually, you're right. I was only thinking in terms of decades.

 

[antiterror13]

By your definition, China shouldn't be able to catch up to America or Japan or Germany. To catch up OVER TIME, one only has to accelerate faster than the other. This is like India is accelerating at 7m/s while China is accelerating at 6m/s, no matter how much lead China has eventually India will catch up. And on top of that India is increasing its speed of acceleration, while China is decelerating from 6m/s down to potentially 2m/s.

Is this making it clear for you? I find it hard to believe for an engineer like you you can't understand such simple concept. Which school did you graduated from?

Where did you learn Math ?

China was surpassing everybody but the USA (yet) because the growth in China and other were so much different (15% vs 1-2%) and also the Chinese currency Yuan also stronger over time.

India and China growth rate is practicall the same in 2015. Also remember growth is in local currency and Indian INR is falling like no tomorrow, in fact Chinese growth is higher than India in 2015 if you put the growth in US$