So, China’s gross domestic product grew by 7.7 per cent in 2013. Much media comment has focused on how this performance, by Chinese standards, is relatively lacklustre. It is, together with last year’s 7.7 per cent expansion, the lowest growth rate since 1999.
However, there is another perspective. A quick look at the International Monetary Fund’s list of countries’ GDP numbers shows that China grew last year by an amount somewhat smaller than the size of the entire Indonesian economy but larger than Turkey.
In renminbi terms, China’s GDP climbed by Rmb4,952.3bn to Rmb56,884.5bn in 2013. Using today’s exchange rate of Rmb6.05 to the US dollar, this puts the dollar value of Chinese growth at $818.5bn – more than the $788.2bn the IMF estimates as the size of Turkey’s economy in 2012. Turkey had the world’s 17th largest national GDP in 2012, one place below Indonesia, which had GDP of $878.5bn in 2012, according to IMF estimates.