Middle-class wilt: what's happened to Asia's middle-earners?

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• 00:07

  Do you remember in 2010 when TED Talks were all the rage?

• 00:12

  Here's the author Martin Jakes speaking to an audience in London about the rise of China.

• 00:18

  If you look at the chart at the top here, you'll see that in 2025,

• 00:22

  these Goldman Sachs projections suggest that the Chinese economy will be almost the same size as the American economy.

• 00:29

  The chart shows a projected GDP of $31 trillion in today's money.

• 00:35

  Not bad.

• 00:36

  U.S. GDP was $27 trillion last year.

• 00:40

  Those kind of forecasts for growth in Asia did not escape the attention of U.S. executives like the CEO of General Electric.

• 00:49

  Here's the quote from Jeff Immelt.

• 00:51

  The American consumer is not going to be the engine of global growth.

• 00:54

  It's going to be the billion people joining the middle class in Asia.

• 00:57

  But it's not exactly worked out, because in 2023,

• 01:01

  the Chinese economy was still almost $10 trillion smaller than America's.

• 01:07

  China's $18 trillion economy, obviously second only to the US.

• 01:11

  And in many parts of Asia,

• 01:13

  the growth of the middle class is slowing rather than accelerating.

• 01:18

  So what does that mean for the rest of the world?

• 01:23

  You're listening to Money Talks from The Economist,

• 01:26

  our weekly podcast on the markets, the economy and the world of business.

• 01:30

  In New York, I'm Mike Bird.

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