[pjc50]

> Britain came out of WW2 deeply fcuk'd. We'd lost the Empire, owed the US a crapton in loans, and then were economically smothered under a nationalisation programme that wiped out UK manufacturing competitiveness.

.. and on all those metrics China came out much worse (the civil war, no marshall plan, proxy war with the US, communism), as well as not having the massive advantage of having been an industrial power long before the war.

This article dates the takeoff to 1978 (Deng), which seems reasonable: https://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/regional-economist/a...

Perhaps the question should be "at what date in the future do we expect the cost of a taxi in London and one in Beijing to equalize"?

[sokoloff]

Beijing? Maybe 2050, maybe sooner. 200 km away in countryside outside Beijing vs 200 km away countryside outside London? Probably much longer.