In 1820 China's economy was six times the size of Britain's
As Britain's Industrial Revolution was getting under way in 1820, China produced about a third of the world's output, six times Britain's and nearly twenty times that of the young United States. After a long decline, it is now the world's biggest manufacturer, making more than the next nine countries combined.
For most of the two thousand years up to the 19th century, China ranked among the foremost economic powers, generating a quarter to a third of global output until the mid-1800s. By the end of its civil war in 1949 the economy lay in ruins, with the retreating Kuomintang having carried off gold, silver and dollar reserves.
From 1949 until 1978 the People's Republic ran a self-sufficient, state-led economy geared to rapid industrialisation, while much market activity went underground; the Great Leap Forward and the famine that followed did severe damage. Reforms under Deng Xiaoping, launched in 1978, turned China into the fastest-growing major economy, its climb from deep poverty to one of the largest economies the quickest of any country.
The human impact was vast. Between 1978 and 2018 some 800 million people left extreme poverty, more than any country has ever achieved, and the share living in extreme poverty fell from 88.1 percent in 1981 to 0.2 percent in 2019. Factories moved from clothing and shoes to computers, medicines and cars, and now produce about 3.7 trillion dollars of manufacturing value added, more than the United States, South Korea, Germany, Britain and France together.
Officially a socialist market economy guided by five-year plans, China mixes state-owned firms with a large private sector. It has been the largest economy by purchasing power since 2016 and ranks second by nominal GDP. With 773 million workers in 2024 it has the world's biggest labour force, though an ageing population is shrinking it. Growth is uneven: coastal regions such as the Yangtze and Pearl River deltas are far richer than the interior. It was the only major economy to grow in 2020, by 2.3 percent.
Source: Economy of China
