And don’t forget that GDP just means, “monetary value of sales” and can include such things as financial transactions that created nothing. If debt is sold 3 times for value X, then 3X has been added to the GDP. China has a much loser level of financialized nonsense than the EU. Its GDP reflects tangible productivity, an ability to create actual products and services.
True, services sector especially has measurement problems, what can be considered a transfer payment vs payment for a service, and services can be massively overinflated. And there is also purchasing power vs prices at nominal exchange rate conversion.
Correct. GDP is an extremely misleading metric. Financialized economies have greatly artificially inflated GDPs compared to productive industrial economies.
China’s economic growth, visualized
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