Economic Growth and Convergence, Applied to China

Abstract

From the perspective of conditional convergence, China's GDP growth rate since 1990 has been surprisingly high. However, China cannot deviate forever from the global historical experience, and the per capita growth rate is likely to fall soon from around 8 percent per year to a range of 3–4 percent. China can be viewed as a middle-income convergence success story, grouped with Costa Rica, Indonesia, Peru, Thailand and Uruguay. Upper-income convergence successes (toward which China is likely heading) include Chile, Hong Kong, Ireland, Malaysia, Poland, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan.