How long will it take for China to catch up with or surpass the United States in per capita GDP and per capita income? To answer this question, we must first understand how big the current economic gap between China and the United States is.
According to information released by the World Bank: the per capita GDP of the United States in 2013 was US$51,248, and the per capita GDP of China was US$6,629; the per capita income of the United States in 2014 was US$43,017, and that of China was US$7,476.
It can be seen from the above two sets of figures that the current economic gap between China and the United States is undoubtedly huge.
However, the gap between China and the United States is not only reflected in World Bank statistics, but also in the gold content of GDP: Since the early 1980s, China's economy has been growing at a high speed, due to the real A market economic system in the sense is far from being formed. The main characteristics of the national economic structure are "three more and one less": first, there are too many large state-owned enterprises that rely on monopolizing national resources and energy, and relying on government policy protection and financial subsidies; second, there are too few There are too many technology “clone” enterprises with horizontal duplication of construction, too weak international market competitiveness, and low product added value; third, there are too many joint ventures that rely entirely on foreign core technologies and basically stay at the level of processing supplied materials. What is "a small number"? It means that there are too few large companies with high technology content, upstream of the global industrial chain, strong competitiveness and risk resistance capabilities.
These "three more and one less" have resulted in the national economy always showing an extensive development and growth trend. Although GDP has soared over the past thirty years, its gold content has remained at a very low level.
Looking at the current status of China’s national economy and GDP content from the current status of China’s manufacturing industry: Manufacturing has always been a pillar industry of the economy of large countries. However, the long-term low-level duplication of construction has made the added value of China's products very low today. There are too many companies that can only survive by "cloning" other people's products, selling at low prices and vicious competition; they are completely dependent on foreign core technologies and basically stay in the past. There are too many joint ventures with poor material processing level. Because of this, China's manufacturing industry has long been in a state of low profits or even losses. For example, in 2014, 260 manufacturing companies ranked among the top 500 Chinese companies, with a total operating income of 23 trillion yuan, but a total net profit of only 462.3 billion yuan.
What is the concept of a total annual net profit of 260 large manufacturing companies of 462.3 billion yuan? Answer: It is only 1/3 of the annual profits of China’s 17 state-owned banks. In the same year, the total operating income of China’s 17 state-owned banks was 5.52 trillion yuan, but the net profit was as high as 1.23 trillion yuan!
Manufacturing Industry The serious backwardness of science and technology level (let alone management level) has resulted in China not only lagging far behind the United States, Japan and many Western countries in terms of highly profitable high-tech digital electronic products and internationally renowned brands, but even South Korea is far behind. As a result, a status quo that has long distressed countless Chinese people cannot be changed: the high-end electronics, computer and digital product markets in China are almost entirely monopolized by the United States, Japan, Europe and South Korea. A lot of money is pouring into the pockets of the world's technological powers.
A member of the CPPCC once used the word "bloody" to describe the phenomenon of China's manufacturing industry: "Most of the core components of various domestic appliance brands in China come from abroad. Cars, computers, etc. are generally considered It is a highly profitable industry, and almost all of it faces bloody foreign technological exploitation.
Chinese companies, with the cheapest labor force in the world, consume a lot of energy and suffer huge pollution; while foreigners who master core technologies only need to sign a technical contract to take away more than half of the hard-earned money of Chinese companies! ”
The “bloody foreign technological exploitation” is no exaggeration. As early as ten or twenty years ago, many economists were devastated by these phenomena: China exported a domestically produced MP3 player priced at US$79. Foreign countries need to take away 45 US dollars in patent fees, and the manufacturing cost is 32.5 US dollars. The net profit obtained by Chinese companies is only 1.5 US dollars. The selling price of a DVD exported from China is 32 US dollars, and the patent fee paid to foreigners is 18 US dollars. The cost For 13 U.S. dollars, Chinese companies can only earn 1 U.S. dollar in profit...
Another example is the automobile manufacturing industry. Although China is currently the world's largest automobile manufacturing country, it is still in the assembly stage - goods. It is a Chinese product, and the "core" is "Japanese core", "German core", and "American core". The majority of the profits are taken away for granted and justifiably!
It is said that the gold content of China's GDP has always been at a very low level. The status does not mean that China does not have very profitable enterprises and companies. As we all know: China's real estate industry is the most profitable in the world; China's major state-owned banks are also the most profitable in the world - in 2014, there were 7 companies in China. Six of the top 50 companies in the Fortune Global 500 are Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, China Construction Bank, Bank of China, Agricultural Bank of China, China Development Bank, and Bank of Communications (the other one is PetroChina). Large state-owned enterprises such as China State Grid, China Mobile, and China Telecom are also very profitable.
And the crux of the problem is precisely this: as the global economy becomes more and more integrated, the economic and trade war has become a war. Under the conditions of an open-ended world war, the competition between countries has largely become a battle between multinational companies. Therefore, whether a country can win in the fierce international market competition and how much comprehensive strength it has. Strong, multinational companies that are in the upper reaches of the global industrial chain and have strong risk resistance are a crucial factor. However, the vast majority of the 91 mainland Chinese companies that made it to the Fortune Global 500 this year rely on monopoly resources and Energy and prices, the main market and profits are all in the country, and there are almost no state-owned enterprises with any international competitiveness (including 47 central enterprises supervised by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission and 37 local state-owned enterprises). There are only 7 private enterprises that truly represent the vitality of a country's national economy. . There are few multinational companies and brands that are truly famous in the world! If we have to count them, Huawei and Lenovo can barely make up the number.
Looking at the United States: Although its economic aggregate is large. The growth rate has been very low, but due to the highly mature and sound market economic system and the rule of law environment, the reasonable industrial structure of the national economy and the high degree of intensification, there are too many companies like Boeing, Apple, Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, Intel, Pfizer, JPMorgan Chase, International Business Machines Corporation, Chevron, Nike, Hollywood, NBA, Disneyland, Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, McDonald's, KFC, etc. are in the upper reaches of the global industrial chain and have strong international competitiveness and risk resistance capabilities. They can not only compete in the domestic market A private multinational company that earns huge profits and makes a lot of money all over the world. For example, in 2014, almost all of the 128 companies in the United States that ranked among the Fortune Global 500 were companies like this.
The huge gap in GDP content between China and the United States is even more clear in the sharp contrast in profits between China and the United States among the world's top 500 companies: In 2014, of the 128 companies in the United States that were among the world's top 500, 24 were among the world's top 500 companies. Ranked among the top 50 profits. Its total profits reached US$798.7 billion, accounting for 40% of the total profits of the Fortune 500 companies. Among the 91 Chinese companies among the world's top 500 companies, 16 have suffered serious losses. The revenue profit margin of the top 500 Chinese companies is less than half that of the top 500 American companies. The more severe reality is that compared with previous years, the profits of Chinese companies have continued to decline, while those in the United States have continued to rise.
Cite a few thrilling examples:
In 2014, Apple’s revenue ranked 15th among the Fortune 500 companies, but its profits were as high as US$3.7037 billion, ranking 15th in the world. The total profits of the three Chinese companies, Sinopec (No. 3), PetroChina (No. 4), and State Grid Corporation of China (No. 7), are still higher than US$161.9 million!
What does having only one Apple company mean to the United States? According to JP Morgan Chase data : Last year, iPhone 5 shipped 8 million units in the fourth quarter. Assuming the retail price is the same as the iPhone 4S’s US$600, minus the total imported components of US$200, each mobile phone will contribute US$400 to US GDP. The new iPhone will increase U.S. GDP by US$3.2 billion in the fourth quarter, which is equivalent to US$12.8 billion in annualized terms, equivalent to an annualized GDP growth of 0.33 percentage points. The U.S. GDP growth rate for the entire year this year is expected to be 2%. This means that an Apple mobile phone contributes 1/6 of the added value of US GDP.
Take the American oil company ExxonMobil as an example. It ranked fifth on the Fortune Global 500 in 2014 after PetroChina, with a turnover of approximately US$40.7 billion and a profit of approximately US$3.2 billion. .
What about PetroChina, which ranked fourth? Its revenue that year was about US$43.2 billion, US$2.5 billion more than Exxon Mobil, but its profit was only US$1.8 billion, less than Exxon Mobil. 1.4 billion US dollars!
They are both oil companies, but the profit contrast is so huge.
What’s worse is that many Chinese companies that are among the Fortune 500 and China’s Fortune 500 are many large medium and long-term loss-makers or “horse-manure-smooth” companies that have relied on government subsidies for a long time - this is fully Reflected in the "ranking list of subsidy kings": On September 1, People's Daily Online published an article titled "2,030 listed companies received government subsidies in the first half of the year, and PetroChina continued to be the subsidy king." The article revealed: As of April 3 this year, 1,934 listed companies in China have released their 2013 annual reports, of which 1,350 companies have received government subsidies, accounting for 70%, with a total subsidy of 71.6 billion yuan. Among them, PetroChina once again topped the top ten subsidy list with a daily subsidy of 5.174 billion yuan, while Sinopec received a subsidy of 790 million yuan, ranking fourth. In the past ten years, "Two Barrels of Oil" *** has received 125.883 billion yuan in government financial subsidies.
The more severe reality is that the amount of government subsidies for listed companies is increasing at a rate of about 20% every year: 40 billion yuan in 2010, 47 billion yuan in total in 2011, and 564 in 2012. billion, compared with 71.6 billion yuan in 2013.
A phenomenon that deserves great attention from the government is: in today's China, the vast majority of Chinese companies in the "loss rankings" of the world's top 500 and the top 500 Chinese companies are state-owned enterprises; "subsidies" that have long relied on government subsidies to survive "King", most of them are also state-owned enterprises. For example: 7 of the 10 companies with the largest government subsidies in 2013 were state-controlled companies. For another example, among the top ten A-share subsidy kings in 2012, 8 were state-owned enterprises.
The "World's Top 500 Loss List", "China's Top 500 Loss List", and the "Subsidy King Ranking" have actually become a microcosm of the gold content of China's GDP and China's economic development.
How many years will it take for China to catch up with the United States?
To sum up, it can be found that the economic gap between China and the United States is far greater than many people imagine.
However, the huge gap between China and the United States is not only in the visible economic statistics, nor in the comprehensive national strength that can be felt everywhere, but also in the institutional culture that is more important than economic data and comprehensive national strength. !The whole world recognizes that the United States is powerful, but the greatest strength of the United States does not lie in its vast and unique geographical environment and land resources; nor does it lie in its numerous nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines, intercontinental missiles and the world's most powerful Nor does it have numerous Boeing, Apple, Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, Intel, Pfizer, JPMorgan Chase, International Business Machines Corporation, Chevron, Nike, Hollywood, NBA, Disneyland, Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, McDonald's, World-famous brands such as KFC... but because it has a powerful self-correction mechanism designed by the founding fathers; but because it has the talent to enable great geniuses such as Edison, Bill Gates, and Jobs, as well as many Nobel Prize winners. It can be used to its full potential, attracting all kinds of elite talents and students from all over the world, and can give birth to great companies such as Boeing, Apple, Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, Intel, Pfizer, JPMorgan Chase, International Business Machines Corporation, Chevron, Nike, and Hollywood. A brand can provide 5% of the world's population with nearly 45% of the world's economic productivity and 40% of high-tech products. What's more, it has a social environment where everyone, rich or poor, can live well!
...All of these are the result of the United States' careful construction and much effort over the past two hundred years. From this, it is not difficult for people to imagine: How big is the real gap between China and the United States?