World Bank and China

choi

(1) Alan Beattie, US to Keep Grip on Helm of World Bank; After Zoellick; With an election looming, the White House is insisting it will choose the institution's hief. Financial Times, Feb 29, 2012.

Note:
(a) The Scottish surname Beattie/Beatty is a pet form of Bartholomew.
(b) A few days ago China wanted to contest the naming right.
(c) There is no need to read the report.

(2) China 2030: Building a modern, harmonious, and creative high-income society. World Bank, Feb 27, 2012.
http://www.worldbank.org/en/news ... 0-executive-summary

My comment:
(a) Unveiled on Feb 27 at Beijing by World Bank president Robert B Zoellick, this report is a collaboration of World Bank and China.
(b) There is no need to read it. I browsed through it, and found nothing novel. Many Chinese--particularly those inside China, from government officials to ordinary people--are convinced there is no need for China to change course, that perhaps in a decade China will surpass US in total GDP (according to foreign exchange rate, not to mention PPP). I disagree. But The World Bank report says nothing new, to support the conclusion economy overhaul is critical for China to advance further, citing middle-income trap, and china's dwindling pool of young workers, demand for high wages and population aging.
(c) The World Bank report is available online for free (URL above), as a whole and in individual sections.
(d) I dissent from one point in Overview. That is, "Box 1 The middle-inCome trap," at page 12 of section "Overview" explains that
"Of 101 middle-income economies in 1960, only 13 became high income by 2008 (see box 1 figure b)—Equatorial Guinea; Greece; Hong Kong
SAR, China; Ireland; Israel; Japan; Mauritius; Portugal; Puerto Rico; Republic of Korea; Singapore; Spain; and Taiwan, China."

The x axis AND y axis of figure b are 1960 AND 2008 "per capita income relative to United States (log of %)", respectively.

I have serious doubt:
* Other than Japan, Korea and Taiwan, one will be hard pressed to name a physical product from the remaing 10 economies (Hong Kong and Singapore are financial centers and trade ports).
* Israel's pride, the defense industry, is classified.
* economy of Puerto Rico never goes anywhere.
* Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain are falling backward.   
* Mauritius:
population 1.3m;
GDP - per capita (PPP) $15,000 (2011 est.) according to 2012 CIA Worlsd Factbook;
GDP per capita (PPP) $14,746 or (nominal, by exchange rate): $7,989 (both numbers are 2011 estimations), Wikipedia, citing World Economic Outlook, International Monetary Fund, April 2011.

The comparable figures for Russia are $16,687 and $13,235, respectively. Yet Russia is not one of the 13.
* Equatorial Guinea
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equatorial_Guinea
(one of the smallest countries in continental Africa, geographically and population-wide (680,000); "The discovery of sizeable petroleum reserves in recent years is altering the economic and political status of the country. Its gross domestic product (GDP) per capita ranks 28th in the world; however, most of the country's considerable oil wealth actually lies in the hands of only a few people.Equatorial Guinea has one of the worst human rights records in the world")

The concensus is in the postwar era, only the four dragons made the transition.