Crisis narrows China–UK gap

The following link is to a video charting the growth of China and the UK over the past 200 years and projecting forward to 2014. The video is from Gapminder, a site that allows you to compare countries’ performance in terms of a large range of economic and social indicators.

The introduction to this video states, “200 years ago, United Kingdom was a leading nation of the world – both in regard to health and economy. In this video, Hans Rosling details UK’s 200-year journey, to present time, and also shows that China, in the coming five years, will narrow the gap to UK faster than ever.”

Crisis narrows China–UK gap Hans Rosling, Gapminder (2/6/09)

Questions

  1. Why has the gap in GDP per head narrowed between the China and the UK?
  2. Why is the gap likely to narrow further over the next five years?
  3. Identify the factors that will determine how much the gap is likely to narrow in this period.