China is so big it breaks numbers — but adds up to fascination
Since moving to China, I’ve had to give up numbers. Math, scope, scale, frames of reference ... it all fails me here. I’m from the green fields of Wiltshire. A patch of Merry Olde England, most famous for Stonehenge, twee little villages where the Harry Potter films were shot, and cathedrals that attract tourists all the way from Russia.
It’s a small place, where you can count everyone you know on the six fingers of your hand.
When I was 11, we moved to the local megalopolis of Swindon. The jump from a small town to a “city” of 200,000 was staggering. It had not one, but two Burger Kings.
But by my first night in Beijing I realized that everything I believed to be true about numbers was utterly wrong, quaint — adorable, even.
I remember standing dumb-struck on a pedestrian bridge at rush hour, looking down on the Third Ring Road. The M4 motorway linking my hometown to London has six lanes. This had 14 including side road.
The road itself was invisible, just a blur of white lights going one way, a blur of red snaking the other.
My girlfriend nudged me. “We call this a dragon.” I mumbled back, “Then where is its tail?”
Let’s be honest, 1.4 billion is an unfathomable number. There are more Chinese people alive today than British people in all of history. Ever.
The United States has 10 cities with a million people; China has more than 140.
I messaged my mother that I was on a day trip to Tianjin. “I don’t know that one, is it big?” she asked. I was torn. Reply with “Nearly twice the size of London” or “About the same as the Netherlands?’’
“Bit too busy for me then,” she demurred. I hadn’t the heart to tell her about Chongqing. Or Chengdu, Sichuan province. Or Changsha, Hunan province ...
It’s not just numbers but also distances here. Another time, when heading to Guangdong province bad weather shut down air traffic around Beijing.
I was already packing away my sunglasses. “Not to worry,” chirped up my girlfriend, “To the train!”
Two movies and a nap later, we arrived in Guangzhou. It was only when the train doors opened, and a wall of heat melted my face, that I took in what just happened: We’d just traveled the same distance as London to Morocco. In a work day. And it was normal.
But now I am a convert to this absurd numbers idea. And I realized it while listening to the British budget recently.
“Growth expected to be resilient … improving next year from the 1.3 percent forecast at the Spring Statement … to 1.6 percent,” Chancellor of the Exchequer Phillip Hammond told Parliament, to whoops of delight from politicians behind him.
Meanwhile, global investors are all in a blather that China might “only” achieve 6.5 percent economic growth this year.
It’s only a few percent faster! China is the world’s second-biggest economy. The United Kingdom is the fifth! And the UK is developed, these are surely comparable! They are not. China is massive. Its economy is massive.
Between 2016 and 2017, the World Bank said that in absolute terms, the Chinese economy grew by more than $1 trillion. A trillion.
Another way to think about it; in just 12 months, China grew by the equivalent of Saudi Arabia’s entire economy. Picked it up, and bolted on Saudi Arabia — whole — to its economy. World’s largest oil exporter Saudi Arabia. That one. Plus Ireland. Or put it another way: print it out, lay it out, and that line of dollar bills would be enough to wrap around the world 4,000 times.
You could stretch it to the sun, but the last $100 billion would be burning up inside.
It’s enough to buy McDonald’s, Walmart, Sony, BMW, Nike, H&M and still have enough left over for every professional football club in Europe — Barcelona, Manchester United, Scunthorpe, the lot.
This country is too big to comprehend. China breaks numbers.
“… then 1.4 percent in 2020 and 2021; 1.5 percent in 2022; and 1.6 percent in 2023,” Hammond continued, to more cheers, and 12,000 kilometers away, the sound of me flopping to the desk in dismay.
I’m not sure what an extra 1.6 percent of the UK economy is equivalent to. Maybe it’s enough for a third Burger King in Swindon.