Chapter 2
Manufacturing Output: China Is Already the Number One
In manufacturing output, the shift of global power balance is drastic. In this sector the West has lost its dynamics, and all the growth energy has gone to China and other emerging economies.
Between 2001 and 2009, the new economic giant increased its manufacturing output (value added in 2005 U.S. dollars) by 136.8 percent (2.368 times), while growth in the West was very slow if not negative. In all major European economies, manufacturing output in 2009 was smaller than in 2001. As 2009 was the year of the worst recession of the postwar era, we will also present the data on the Western countries’ manufacturing output growth between 2001 and 2007, when it reached its precrisis peak. So, between 2001 and 2009, the manufacturing value added in the United States increased 15.9 percent (between 2001 and 2007, the increase was 20.7 percent) and in Japan 14.6 percent (24.3 percent). In Germany, it fell by 8.8 percent (the increase in the 2001–2007 period was 15.9 percent), in France 7.4 percent (an increase of 6.6 percent), in the United Kingdom 12.2 percent (an increase of 1.5 percent), and in Italy 18.0 percent (an increase of 2.0 percent). In India between 2001 and 2009, the increase was 97 percent, but its manufacturing output is less than one-tenth that of China.
As for absolute numbers, in 2008 China’s manufacturing output (value added in current dollars) exceeded that of the United States: $1.87 trillion and $1.79 ...
