All content in this article is based on official and reliable sources, and the specific information is detailed in the article
Preface
Time flies, and April 2024 will also come to an end, and China and the United States have also released their own first-quarter GDP.
What people didn't expect was that the total GDP of the mainland in the first quarter was 29.63 trillion yuan, which is a lot of numbers, but China, as the world's second largest economy, seems to have widened the gap with the United States.
Compared with the United States, the mainland's total GDP is only 60% of that of the United States, what is going on, is China's economy in recession?
Comparison between China and the United States
In the first quarter of this year, the mainland's GDP was 29.63 trillion yuan, and the primary, secondary and tertiary industries grew by 3.3%, 6.0% and 5.0% respectively, while the total GDP increased by 5.3% year-on-year.
Information source: Jiupai News - 5.3% year-on-year growth!Preliminary calculation, the mainland's GDP in the first quarter exceeded 29 trillion yuan (2024.4.16)
This result seems to be good, after all, many people have predicted that China's GDP growth in the first quarter will not exceed 5%, but now we have proved ourselves.
But sometimes it's not enough to just look at yourself, after all, if we grow far behind other countries, then we will gradually widen the gap.
On the evening of April 25, the U.S. Department of Commerce also released the first quarter data, after seeing the data, people can't help but feel cold, as a highly developed economy, the United States GDP in the first quarter was 6.93 trillion, an annualized increase of 1.6% from the previous quarter.
Source: Red Star News - US GDP growth in the first quarter was announced, "significantly lower than expected" (2024.4.26)
This term may be unfamiliar, but we can also convert it into a year-on-year growth rate of 3%, so if you look at it, the growth rate of the US economy is not as fast as that of the mainland.
But you must know that the United States itself is a developed country, a highly developed economy, and it is unrealistic for it to want to grow as rapidly as emerging economies.
However, this 3% growth rate has crushed other developed countries in the world, so that countries such as Japan and South Korea can only hope to catch up.
More critically, if the mainland's total GDP is converted into US dollars, it is only 4.17 trillion US dollars, which is only 60% of that of the United States.
Could it be that the gap between us and the United States has widened again?
The real reason for the gap between China and the United States
If we want to understand the reasons for this gap between China and the United States, we must first understand two terms: real growth rate and nominal growth rate.
Let's put it this way, the mainland's GDP in the first quarter of 2023 is 28.44 trillion yuan, if the data of last year and this year are calculated, the growth rate should be 4.18%, why will it become 5.3%?
And this 4.18% is the nominal growth rate, because a year has passed, and while the economy is developing, there will also be a certain amount of inflation, although the increase will not be obvious, but it will be reflected if the volume is large.
The real growth rate of 5.3% is obtained after excluding factors such as rising prices.
It stands to reason that inflation will create a situation in which "money is worthless," and the output value of all aspects will be increased as a result, and the data will be higher and better-looking, but the actual growth rate announced by the mainland is higher than the nominal growth rate.
This is not an error in the statistics, but only that in the first quarter of this year, compared with last year, prices in all aspects did not rise, and the inflation index was negligible, or even decreased.
If we take the data, China's consumer index rose 0.1% year-on-year in the first quarter, while the US data was as high as 3.5%, which is a world of difference.
Information sources:
China Youth Network-U.S. inflation exceeded expectations in March, and people complained that prices were too high (2024.4.11)
Qilu One Point-National Bureau of Statistics: CPI was flat year-on-year in the first quarter, and will slowly rebound at a low level in the future (2024.4.16)
Behind such exaggerated statistics is the frustration of the American people, who face the increasing cost of living, including housing and gasoline prices.
In an interview with an American journalist, some people complained that it used to cost 35 (dollars) to add a tank of gasoline, but now it has become 45.
Another shop owner also complained that the rent, which used to be 1,400 a month, has now risen to 1,800.
Such an exaggerated price rise has naturally contributed a lot to the growth of US GDP, and it is precisely because of this that the economic gap between China and the United States seems to be widening.
It can be said that the GDP of the United States is more like a "digital boom", but even so, it is still a lot lower than last year, which shows that behind the surface prosperity of the United States, it is actually facing many thorny problems.
However, the more this situation is, the more we must not take it lightly, because according to the consistent nature of the United States, what we think about when we have problems is not how to solve them, but how to turn them into others and snatch wealth from somewhere else.
The United States began to loot the wealth of Asia
In the face of domestic inflation, the Federal Reserve has directly raised interest rates with a heavy hand, and with the implementation of the interest rate hike policy, inflation in the United States has not been completely suppressed, but has eased.
However, the Fed is still not considering cutting interest rates, but has said that it will not consider it before September, and has even signaled to the outside world that it will raise interest rates again.
The U.S. interest rate hike policy objectively attracted a large amount of wealth to the dollar, and at the same time made the dollar strengthen again, and at the same time, it also caused the relative depreciation of the yuan in the first quarter.
This has also caused the mainland to suffer a loss when converting the renminbi into US dollars, and the gap seems to widen.
Actually, for us, these numbers don't really affect us, but for Japan, it's miserable.
As the dollar continues to raise interest rates, the yen has also fallen sharply in recent days, and on April 14 there was a new low of 145:1, coupled with the Bank of Japan's lying flat, the yen can be said to be drifting away.
The fact that the yen was the first to fall is also an important signal that the United States is starting to look at Asian wealth, so we must be careful with that.
De-dollarization
The U.S. dollar used to occupy the position of the world's currency by relying on war and oil, but in recent years, in order to maintain its hegemony, the United States has continued to abuse the hegemony of the U.S. dollar, which has aggravated the risks of the world economy.
An Indian banking expert even bluntly said that the US dollar is the world's number one financial terrorist.
It is precisely for this reason that the mainland must come up with practical measures to protect the security of the renminbi, so what feasible methods do we have?
In the past year, the call for de-dollarization can be said to be getting higher and higher, and countries around the world have suffered too much from the dollar, so they also hope for the arrival of currency multipolarity.
The mainland is no exception, but at the same time, we are now actively exploring the path of RMB internationalization, which can not only ensure the security of the mainland economy, but also bring more impetus to economic growth.
Information source: CCTV news client-Many countries in the world accelerate "de-dollarization", and the status of the US dollar reserve currency is difficult to protect?(2023.5.3)
文 | ZYG
Edit | Canned green oranges
[Disclaimer] The process described in the article and the pictures are all from the Internet, and this article aims to advocate positive social energy without vulgarity and other bad guidance. If it involves copyright or character infringement issues, please contact us in time, and we will delete the content at the first time!