There are three outstanding events in the economic history of the world in the past two centuries. The first was the Industrial Revolution that started in England in the early 19th century. The second was the rise of mass production and of the United States a century later. The third is the rise of Asia generally, and China in particular, in the past forty years.
The British Industrial Revolution lifted Britain's growth rate to 1.1% per capita per year over the fifty-year period starting around 1820. In the previous fifty years, British growth was 0.2% per capita. The Revolution involved a population of approximately 30 million in Britain, and perhaps some 50-60 million in the rest of Europe.
The American rise, dated from 1870 to 1929, involved on average about 80 million people and brought the United States' growth rate over that period to about 1.6% per capita annually. That was about half a percentage point higher than in the previous fifty years.
The rise of China, from 1978 to today, was driven by average annual per capita growth of 5% (double what it was between 1950 and 1978) and involved, on average, a population of 1.2 billion.
These simple figures show the unprecedented character of Chinese growth. It increased incomes at a rate severalfold higher than the rates achieved in the other two dramatic long-term economic developments, and it involved more than 10 times as many people. In economic terms, the world has never seen anything like it.
It would seem odd, given such facts, to even ask whether we should applaud Chinese growth. As Adam Smith’s commercial society and Karl Marx’s capitalism roared in the 19th century, it is true that some people idealized the bucolic societies of the past. But there was no doubt that the world and Northern Europe were better off for it. And there is not much that can be idolized about the quality of life in the pre-1978 China.
There are thus at least two grounds to applaud Chinese growth.
First, better lives anywhere in the world are something that we, as human beings, must be happy to see. Especially so when such developments eliminate abject poverty (as in China) and are responsible for more than ¾ of the reduction of worldwide absolute poverty. Should we not salute the end of misery, higher life expectancy (increased by 10 years in China between 1978 and 2019) and better education (88% secondary education enrollment)?
Second, such success, as indeed British and American success did, teaches us something about the way to organize production and society. If we learn well, the success can be replicated elsewhere, producing similar results. The Chinese experience, often based on improvisation and local conditions, will not be easy to transplant. But the imitation of Chinese success (and East Asian success, generally) might still lie in the future. If we learn from China, it could help eradicate abject poverty and bring modest prosperity to Africa within the next two generations.