The CIA has a lot of interesting statistics about individual countries
including economic information.
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ch.html
They do not have 'manufacturing capacity' however they do have GDP
(value of all final goods and services):
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/ch.html
and a nation by nation comparison as well including total world's GDP:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/rankorder/2001rank.html
According to the link above:
China's GDP is 6.449 trillion and the world's GDP is 51.480 trillion.
(51,480 billion, it boggles the mind)
so, 6.449/51.480 = 12.527% of the world's GDP
That's the simple answer and the method makes sense to me. But it
get's complicated if you want it in Euros, Dollars, Yuan, Yen, or
whaterver as aposed to a baket of goods. China's currency is a
'manipulatd' or 'pegged'. Their currency is pegged to the dollar, and
most economists agree that their currency is undervalued. The CIA
does use a formula which I have not thoroughly read based on PPP.
(see below) So theoretically comparing "apples to apples" produced
anywhere in the world, 12.57% would seem correct to me. However in
Yuan or dollars or Euros etc., it would be very different (and very
succeptable to interpretation, it would seem to me).
GDP as defined by the CIA:
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/docs/notesanddefs.html
This entry gives the gross domestic product (GDP) or value of all
final goods and services produced within a nation in a given year. GDP
dollar estimates in the Factbook are derived from purchasing power
parity (PPP) calculations. See the note on GDP methodology for more
information.
GDP methodology:
In the Economy category, GDP dollar estimates for all countries are
derived from purchasing power parity (PPP) calculations rather than
from conversions at official currency exchange rates. The PPP method
involves the use of standardized international dollar price weights,
which are applied to the quantities of final goods and services
produced in a given economy. The data derived from the PPP method
provide the best available starting point for comparisons of economic
strength and well-being between countries. The division of a GDP
estimate in domestic currency by the corresponding PPP estimate in
dollars gives the PPP conversion rate. Whereas PPP estimates for OECD
countries are quite reliable, PPP estimates for developing countries
are often rough approximations. Most of the GDP estimates are based
on extrapolation of PPP numbers published by the UN International
Comparison Program (UNICP) and by Professors Robert Summers and Alan
Heston of the University of Pennsylvania and their colleagues. In
contrast, the currency exchange rate method involves a variety of
international and domestic financial forces that often have little
relation to domestic output. In developing countries with weak
currencies the exchange rate estimate of GDP in dollars is typically
one-fourth to one-half the PPP estimate. Furthermore, exchange rates
may suddenly go up or down by 10% or more because of market forces or
official fiat whereas real output has remained unchanged. On 12
January 1994, for example, the 14 countries of the African Financial
Community (whose currencies are tied to the French franc) devalued
their currencies by 50%. This move, of course, did not cut the real
output of these countries by half. One important caution: the
proportion of, say, defense expenditures as a percentage of GDP in
local currency accounts may differ substantially from the proportion
when GDP accounts are expressed in PPP terms, as, for example, when an
observer tries to estimate the dollar level of Russian or Japanese
military expenditures. Note: the numbers for GDP and other economic
data cannot be chained together from successive volumes of the
Factbook because of changes in the US dollar measuring rod, revisions
of data by statistical agencies, use of new or different sources of
information, and changes in national statistical methods and
practices. |
