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China 's Economic Success Of The United States

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In 2014, what had been predicted numerous times throughout the past decade had finally occurred. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), China had overtook the United States (US) to become the world’s largest economy, with their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) measured by way of Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), where GDP is adjusted to accommodate the relative prices in each market, was estimated to be at $17.6 trillion compared to $17.4 trillion for the US (Fray 2014). This stood testament to the success of the economic reforms in the wake of the death of Chairman Mao Zedong, led by Deng Xiao Ping beginning in 1978, in revitalising the Chinese economy to the superpower status that it enjoys today (Zhu, Webber & Benson 2010, p. 9). However this measure of China’s economic success is but one side of the coin. According to China’s official poverty standard, poverty fell from 65% to 10% in 1981 to 2004 (World Bank 2009, pp. iii-v) and while this marked reduction is exceptional, the way these statistics are obtained reveals part of the problem. The Chinese government’s official poverty line is one of the lowest in the world and if poverty were to be measured by international standards, in 2005, China would have 254 million people under the US $1.25 poverty line set by the World Bank, the second largest number of poor in the world apart from India, compared to 15 million under official standards. This shows that while China’s tremendous economic growth is undeniable, its

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