China downplays economic advances
Who me, rich and powerful? China’s official reaction this week to its latest milestone — surpassing Japan to become the world’s second-largest economy — has been more modest than boastful.
Rather than flaunting its newfound status, China, the world’s most populous nation but still roughly 100th in per capita income, is going through contortions to show that it really isn’t that successful at all.
Since Monday, when Japan released economic data showing that its gross domestic product for the second quarter had slipped behind China’s, Beijing has been trumpeting its shortcomings. In news conferences, on talk shows and in editorial pages, commentators have hastened to pooh-pooh the statistics, saying they are wrong, misleading or meaningless. They compare China not to Japan or the United States, but to Albania; both have annual per capita income of about $3,600.
