The New York Times reports on new statistics which show that economic development in China is slowly spreading out (“like an ink blot”) from the urban coastal areas, potentially narrowing the income gap between the coast and the rural hinterlands:
Consider some recent statistics:
Urban fixed-asset investment in eastern China rose 15.4 percent in the first two months from a year earlier; in central and western China, it surged 34.3 percent and 46.7 percent, respectively, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
Business confidence in the west was much stronger than in the east in the first quarter, according to statistics office surveys released last Thursday.
“The distribution of scores is a reflection of growth potential identified by businesses,” said Sherman Chan, an economist at Moody’s Economy.com in Sydney. “Robust development in the past decade was concentrated in the east, leaving large untapped opportunities, mainly in the western and central areas.”