Replies to post #1732 on The Rising Influence of Rising Affluence

[DewDiligence]

51% of China’s 1.35B people live in cities, up from about 20% in 1980:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203735304577166652002366514.html

Compared to other emerging markets, China’s urbanization still has a long, long way to go, as can be seen from the charts in #msg-56438958.

McKinsey, the consulting firm, forecasts that China’s urban population will reach 1B by 2030, which implies a 2012->2030 increase in China’s urban population that is larger then the total US population in 2012.

See #msg-56407145, #msg-70416781, #msg-70959130, #msg-57188901, and the table in #msg-48556414 for related info.

[DewDiligence]

World’s economic center of gravity is shifting eastward at increasing rate:

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2012/06/28/economic-center-of-gravity-2000-year-round-trip

The world’s economic center of gravity has shifted [eastward] further over the past decade than at any time in history and is set to accelerate further as more developing-world citizens leave rural farms for cities. From 2000 to 2010, the economic center of gravity — the geographic center of the world’s annual economic growth — moved about 140 km (87 miles) per year…

That eastward movement was the fastest jump since A.D. 1, and was particularly brisk from 2007 from 2010 when the recession stalled growth in the rich world while developing economies kept humming along. The economic center of gravity shifted by approximately 315 miles south east between 2007 and 2010.

…that’s all just a very fancy way of saying Asian economies are big and are growing really fast. But, as the McKinsey paper notes, it isn’t so much that countries like China and India are growing fast — it’s that their cities are [#msg-56438958].

As more and more of the developing world clusters into a number of rapidly growing mid-to-large-sized metropolitan areas, it is driving growth and productivity while elevating millions of poor to the ranks of the consumer class.

This is precisely the premise of this message board.

Much of that growth—47%—will be driven by about 440 developing-world cities, according to McKinsey. Just over half of those cities are in mainland China…

McKinsey forecasts that China’s urban population will reach 1B by 2030, which implies a 2012->2030 increase in China’s urban population that is larger then the total US population in 2012.

Please see #msg-56407145, #msg-70416781, #msg-70959130, #msg-57188901, and the table in #msg-48556414 for related info.