The Ultimate China Newsletter
Ten China Predictions for 2021
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GDP expands 10%. Western experts predict GDP will expand by 8% and, since they are always 25% law, expect 10%–a $2.4 trillion addition to the economy and the country's fastest growth ever. Bonus Prediction: Wages rise 12%, the EU signs the Investment Agreement, the EEU merges with the RCEP.
Most Fortune 500 companies are Chinese. There will be more than 140 Chinese companies and fewer than 120 US companies on Fortune’s list–a consequence of #1. Last year US companies fell from 126 to 121 while Chinese companies rose from 120 to 129, 80% of which are SOEs.
Five new billionaires created weekly, after four a week were created in 2020. This unprecedented rapid wealth creation will occur as extreme poverty–which currently mars Western states–disappears.
Extreme poverty, homelessness vanish and there will be more drug addicts, suicides and executions, more homeless, poor, hungry and imprisoned people in America than in China. 99% of the bottom half of Chinese society will own a home and have an income, plenty of food and clothes, safe streets, health insurance, a pension, and old age care.
Gini gap narrows. Inequality has been Xi’s pet project since 2012 and will be the priority through 2035. The gap is already narrower than Europe’s: Luxembourgeois are 50 times richer than Moldavavans, while Beijingers are 5-6 times richer than folks in Gansu, and Gansu is richer than Armenia, Ukraine and Moldova.
Urban life revolutionized. China has constructed the equivalent of San Francisco’s entire housing stock every month since 1950 and Xiong'An New Area, south of Beijing, will embody everything they have learned. The loudest sound will be the twittering of birds, most of it will be woods and wetlands, and it will be fully automated, with utilities and infrastructure underground. Increased productivity will repay its capital cost in 30 years.
The first exascale computer. Top supercomputers nowsolve problems at the petascale—a quadrillion calculations/second. At a quintillion calculations/second, exascale computers will more realistically simulate the processes involved in precision medicine, regional climate, additive manufacturing, the conversion of plants to biofuels, the relationship between energy and water use, the unseen physics in materials discovery and design, the fundamental forces of the universe, and more.
Another quantum surprise to match its recent boson sampling achievement. China outspends the US 4:1 in R&D and its Taoist worldview better accommodates quantum physics’ ‘both-and’ paradigm than the West's ‘either-or’ tradition.
Chinese outlive Americans. China’s life expectancy was on track to match America’s by 2028, but the US will see 3.2 million deaths in 2020 (a jump of 15%) and life expectancy will fall by three years. Thanks to its already successful Healthy China 2030, it may maintain its lead permanently.
Chinese vaccines protect the world. Sixty percent of the world's people will be protected by Chinese vaccines and researchers will reveal that India is the source of the Covid-19 virus.
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