China's impressive economic progress since 1979 outweighs all the other potential competition in Asia. Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, China remained relatively backward. However, it began a dramatic economic improvement after 1979 under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping. Because of double-digit growth rates in total wealth produced, China may eventually surpass first Japan and later the United States in the total value of its economic output.
While Japan today has the largest wealth-producing economy in Asia, its population is only approximately one-twelfth the size of China's. Therefore, it probably cannot permanently hold its lead, especially since the Japanese island chain is relatively short on natural resources when compared to China.
China has largely abandoned its socialist system and embarked on economic reform that uses free market or capitalistic characteristics. Because of the large number of still-existing government-owned enterprises, China cannot be said to have entirely abandoned socialism. However, capitalist economic reform is evident. Progress is substantial but uneven throughout China since areas of abject poverty still exist. One cannot rule out a serious economic downturn, however, which could lead to political conflict.
China, in particular, faces a large gap between its progress in
Economic reform and the slowness of its political reform. China's economic growth threatens its Asian neighbors and may be a pretext for other conflicts. Any turmoil in China may spill over into neighboring countries.
India, ostensibly a democratic country, showed respectable but not outstanding growth rates throughout the latter half of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century. Progress in Pakistan, Bangladesh, Myanmar, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam continues to lag behind other countries. North Korea, a communist regime, has experienced the slowest economic growth in Asia. At the close of the twentieth century, periods of famine occurred in North Korea that were so horrible they produced rumors of cannibalism.
World History
