When Does Guangdong = Indonesia = Kazakhstan?

When you’re talking about GDP. Check out this neat interactive graphic from The Economist comparing individual provinces in China to countries in economic terms. My home province of Guangdong leads China in GDP, exports, and population, but ranks a less impressive ninth in GDP per person, a category in which it, along with every other place in mainland China, lags way behind Hong Kong and Macau, which have two of the smallest populations on the list. So next time you hear people talk about how China has the world’s No. 2 economy, bear in mind that it also possesses about a fifth of the world’s population, and in terms of living standards, most of China still has a ways to go to match the Western world (see this list of countries by GDP per capita and compare where China ranks vs. Japan, which China just overtook in terms of GDP), and there’s a huge disparity among certain regions.