Sunday Spectacle LVII

(source: The Economist, Innovation Visualization interactive chart from the April 15th (2010) special report)


Watch that line for China... it's amazing to see the line rise so much from 1985 to 2007... I'm still bearish on China but a chart like this shows why it has great potential. Everyone talks about China's strength in cheap labour and the like but the reality is that the country's greatest strength is its human potential. Someone like Wang Chuanfu, founder of BYD, shows how great their scientific and engineering potential can be... the question is whether their totalitarian system will allow these people to flourish. The Chinese government quietly removed one of their horrendous mistakes, the so-called 'one child policy'—I have a post coming up on demographics soon—but they have a few other big problems ahead (including various bubbles)...

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