China’s Remarkably High GDP Growth

With all the focus now on China’s declining GDP growth rate, some perspective is in order:

One issue with this Solow-convergence explanation is that growth should not have stayed at 10% for very long after the reforms. That is, the Solow model says that you close part of the gap between actual and potential GDP every year, so the growth rate should slow down until it hits . That happens pretty fast.

After 10 years of convergence – about 1990 – China’s growth rate should have been about 6.7%, and it was lower in the early 90’s than in the 1980s. But after 20 years – about 2000 – China’s growth rate should have been down to 5.3%. Yet Chinese GDP growth has been somewhere between 8-10% since 2000, depending on how you want to average growth rates, and what data source you believe.