Though widely used, GDP has drawbacks as an indicator of an economy’s performance. China’s GDP, in particular, is obviously manipulated when the Communist Party deems it necessary. National wealth data for China would provide valuable information.
Publicly available wealth data for China have serious limitations, in particular because they are modeled rather than data-generated. In this report, I create a national wealth series using Chinese government data, based on the Federal Reserve’s method of deriving net wealth.
The wealth series shows a pivot in 2015. For at least a decade prior to that, Chinese wealth grew far more rapidly than official GDP and American wealth did. Since 2015, however, Chinese wealth gains have been uneven, and the American wealth lead has expanded.