Living standard – Taiwan moves past Japan
Since the golden 60′s, 70′s and 80′, Japan is stagnating. The
population is rapidly shrinking, the
economy, despite huge state interventions, is sluggish, prices are decreasing and consumers postponing purchases. In 2010, Japan – contrary to the expectation only 20 years before, to taking over number one from the US – was overtaken by China in terms of purchase power parity GDP. In short: Times has already been brighter for Japan. And now there’s even more bad news (from the Japanese perspective). The high wages being offset by the just as high prices, Japanese now have a lower purchase power than Taiwanese, where rents are only 2/3 and food 1/2 as expensive as in the land of the rising sun.
Noteworthy! The little statistical news shows how noteworthily quickly the economic power is shifting. China has most of the attention but a bunch of smaller south-Asian countries (South-Korea, Taiwan, Hong-Kong, Singapore, Malaysia) are way ahead of China and are de facto developed, industrial countries. The whole region shows a dynamic, which is bound to fundamentally change global economic and political balances. This is not necessarily a bad thing provided western countries accept loosing their dominant status and emerging powers refrain from using military power for resolving their rivalries and territorial issues.
Source: Economist
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