China's American Dream ~ Growth Infographics!

As part of the China Rules series, Javier Hernandez and Quoctrung Bui write in the NYTimes that The American Dream Is Alive. In China...

"In a country still haunted by the Cultural Revolution, where politics are tightly circumscribed by an authoritarian state, the Chinese are now among the most optimistic people in the world -- much more so than Americans and Europeans, according to public opinion surveys. What has changed? Most of all, an economic expansion without precedent in modern history. Eight hundred million people have risen out of poverty. That’s two and a half times the population of the United States. [...] China used to make up much of the world’s poor. Now it makes up much of the world’s middle class."

Accelerated Convergence ~ Growth Strategies...

I want to revisit the big idea of Accelerated Convergence -- figuring out how historically, and how going forward, countries begin to grow rapidly and catch-up with the most prosperous. Check out these data traces from Gapminder which show first Australia, then Canada, then Monaco, then Sweden, then Japan, then South Korea, and now China all shifting from prior GDP/capita trajectory into accelerated convergence mode and then (except for China, yet) converging in GDP/capita with United States...

Who else can do this in the future? And what if all countries began converging at the average Japan+SK+China rate? Where would we be by 2050?