Since this blog went public last October in a deliberate attempt to provoke debate on the relative decline of the U.S., both the U.S. and Chinese economies have slowed a bit. The latest quarterly numbers for China in October 2011 showed annual growth of about 9 percent; for the U.S. the figure was just about 3 percent.
The latest figures show the US economy grew at a 2 percent annual rate in the third quarter of this year. That beats recession, but it’s hardly something to crow about. In China, the slowdown meant growth of 7.4 percent—or, to put that slightly differently, a pace that would double the size of China’s economy in just over 13 years.
