The newest GDP forecasts show the subcontinent staying well abreast of the mainland, but there is a catch. 

Most economists in the know have always realized that Gross Domestic Product figures were at best a blunt instrument carved out by the US in the depths of the depression almost a century ago.

Back then, it was an attempt to figure out what was going on domestically, with even the inventor himself, Simon Kuznets, warning that while it was useful as a measure, it wasn’t all that great a tool for policymakers.

Nothing Better

Since then, it has become the world’s best-known and widely used economic metric, with some consensual global institutionalized lethargy essentially settling on it for lack of anything better. 

In fact, over the years, it has laid an increasingly stronger claim as a one-size-fits-all gauge by which most countries use to judge and evaluate overall economic size and growth, internally and against sovereign peers.

Familiar Findings

In that vein, an online visualization published by the Visual Capitalist earlier this week sheds some familiar, and some new light, on where business is at around the world.

Based on the newest International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts from July, India’s GDP will have significantly outgrown that of mainland China for three consecutive years in a row by 2025.

Diverging Trends

The former is expected to post GDP growth of 6.5 percent then while the latter puts in a distinctly average of 4.5 percent.

Some observers might note that the growth gap between the two was 3 percent in 2023, while it has shrunk to 2 percent in the intervening two years.

More Retirees

But that is only part of the equation. As Visual Capitalist indicates, China has visibly slowed down from the 6-10 percent growth rates seen in the 2010s, with much of that due to its aging population that is expected to leave «the country with fewer workers and more retirees».

India, on the other hand, continues to power ahead, with this year’s forecast being revised upwards because of expected domestic consumption rates.

Stark Perspective

A different visualization published at the end of July, however, puts general population and economic trends, particularly that of Asia compared with the rest of the world, in a far starker perspective.

Visual Capitalist tabulated the number of people born every year since 1950 up to and including 2023 and, from that, it shows that Asia’s population has pretty much tanked since 1990.

The Productivity Question

By contrast, Africa continues to make steep gains while Europe, Latin America & the Caribbean, Northern America, and Oceania have pretty much been flatlining at the same level since the middle of last century.

From a long-term perspective, for Asia to remain one of the world’s key growth engines, future growth likely needs to come from productivity gains if not from the collective labor of individuals.

Wearily Familiar

That is also something that the advanced economies are wearily familiar with, as their more modest forecast 2025 GDP growth rates of between 0.9 and 2.4 percent indicate. 

But in the short term, given everything we know now, imperfect data and metrics aside, it looks like the regional growth mantle has passed from China to India.

Enter Africa

In the medium and longer term, however, one of the main future economic engines of the world could become Africa, with Asia becoming a new Europe or North America, at least growth-wise.