Containerization and globalization
their relative markets, and pushed the country into its transition from goods to services, which causes way less pollution and makes way more money, as the chart below shows.
Contribution of various sectors to GDP in China, 1999-2018
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40
30
20
10
0
Proportion of industrial sector (%GDP)
Proportion of service sector (%GDP)
Figure 7: Contribution of various sectors to GDP in China, 1999-2018 24
And now, these labour-intensive industries, like clothing industry, are moving further to countries with even lower wages like Vietnam and Bangladesh, which are also fast-growing economies. 25 Container, themagic box, brought growth to the less developed countries and reduced production costs significantly, which was beneficial for consumers in rich countries as well. Containerization has reduced the cost of international shipping dramatically and helped mid-income jobs to be distributed more equally across countries. The most significant effect of the process is the decrease in inequality between countries. In 2000, real GDP per capita in high-income countries ($25,593.4) were almost 75 times real GDP per capita in low-income countries ($341.44), but in 2018, this has reduced to 55 times ($40,763.1/$737.0), and this figure is still based on the fact that many of the low-i ncome countries don’t even have adequate infrastructure for globalization. If we look at the upper-middle-income group (where China, the fastest-growing economy is in), we can see that the difference reduced from 13 times ($25,593.4/$1967.3) to only about 5.1 times ($40,763.1/$7921.7). 26 As container ports and other infrastructure projects are being built in more and more countries, it is believed that there will be even less inequality between countries in the future.
24 National Statistics Bureau of China. ‘ China Statistical Yearbook-2018 ’. http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/ndsj/2018/indexeh.htm. 25 In 2018, Real GDP per capita in Vietnamwas 6.57 times as it were in 2000 and in Bangladesh it was 4.06 times.
Source: World Bank. ‘ GDP per capita (current US$) of Vietnam and Bangladesh ’. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?locations=VN-BD.
26 (For all figures in the paragraph) World Bank. ‘ GDP per capita (current US$) of High-Income, Upper-Middle-Income and Low-Income Countries. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.CD?end=2016&locations=XD-XT- XM&name_desc=false.
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