Shanghai: The Finland of the East?

September 5, 2011 5:06 PM

Which countries match the GDP and population of ● Brazil's States? ● China's Provinces? ● India's States and Territories?

● America's states? (Previously)

posted by Winnemac (11 comments total)

I hearty hello to our GDP neighbors in Taiwan.
posted by clavdivs at 5:13 PM on September 5, 2011

What does it mean that RI's GDP matches that of Bulgaria which has a population 7 times bigger and an area nearly 40 times larger? I mean, I guess it's a briefly diverting comparison, but does it tell us anything useful? Except that maybe I should stop complaining about how bad things are in RI?
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:39 PM on September 5, 2011

Texas is Russia!
posted by parmanparman at 5:55 PM on September 5, 2011

Well, G&P, it does tell you at least that per capita GDP is about seven times bigger than Bulgaria's, not to mention that productivity and other enhancers mean that you're able to produce that GDP using a tiny percentage of the space. But the latter tells you that Bulgaria is likely far more agriculturally dependent, and even in agro probably has a much lower per-worker rate of productivity than any place in the US. Just off the top of my head.

The point of these exercises isn't so much the direct comparison, though, as the concept that, hoo boy, we all know these countries -- but how many of us know these provincial economies that are equivalent? I know I bunk off on the Sporcle province quizzes, certain I won't be able to get more than 10% of them for some place like Brazil or India. (My personal standard is to be able to always answer half of the top cities quizzes, and that's not always doable.) And I consider myself a pretty geographically literate person.
posted by dhartung at 5:58 PM on September 5, 2011 [1 favorite]

Bulgaria's GDP doubles when you take purchasing power parity into account, Rhode Island's doesn't. Of course there's still a large per capita disparity, but that's no surprise. Bulgaria is the poorest country in the EU.
posted by Jehan at 6:07 PM on September 5, 2011

I like how the closest foreign-country equivalent to Jiangsu's exports is... Taiwan. Are they trying to piss off the PRC government? Plenty of controversy about that in the comments, I see.
posted by jiawen at 7:46 PM on September 5, 2011

I think I have the Polish tourist bureau's new ad campaign:

[frantic surf guitar] "Imagine all the people in California..."
[languid banjo]: "living on Virginia's income. "
"Spend time in Poland
and leave with a lighter wallet."
posted by pracowity at 1:49 AM on September 6, 2011 [1 favorite]

Hong Kong's GDP = Egypt's GDP

Egypt is 1000 times the size of Hong Kong (and it's population is 12 times as large).

Fascinating stuff.
posted by Acey at 5:05 AM on September 6, 2011

Hong Kong is a very odd place for this kind of data. All kinds of stuff passes through HK as a bastion of trade liberalism before being shipped out into "real China" and points westward. This tremendously inflates its export numbers.
posted by Winnemac at 11:32 AM on September 6, 2011

The footnote:

Correction, February 25th: The original figure given for Hong Kong's exports included re-exports. This has been changed to refer to domestic exports only.

The number given for the yearly value of exports is 7.5 billion usd. That is too low to include all chinese exports passing through the port of HK.
posted by Catfry at 1:16 PM on September 6, 2011

Ah, so it has been changed. Glad they caught that.
posted by Winnemac at 1:29 PM on September 6, 2011