Putin in China Days After Trump; Here’s What Data Says About All 3 Countries

Vladimir Putin landed in Beijing on Tuesday, May 19, hours after Donald Trump’s departure following his own summit with Xi Jinping last week. 

The official occasion was the 25th anniversary of the 2001 Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation. 

Analysts describe the significance as running considerably deeper. And the timing, one day after Trump left, is not incidental.

Using the information from World Data Info, the visualization above compares all three countries across 20 socioeconomic metrics. 

The data context helps to understand what each leader brings to the geopolitical table.

• Russia’s government debt is just 23% of GDP, far lower than China’s 96% and America’s 125%, giving the country fighting an active war under sanctions more fiscal room than either rival
• China exports more goods than the U.S. ($3.79T vs. $3.23T) and consumes more energy than America and Russia combined, yet its citizens earn less on average than Russians.
• The U.S. leads in GDP ($28.75T) and average income ($83,490), but carries the highest debt load and the lowest literacy rate of the three countries

China is the world’s largest goods exporter, with exports of $3.79 trillion, ahead of the United States at $3.23 trillion. 

That single data point frames the entire U.S.-China trade war dynamic.

Trump's tariff regime targets a country that exports more goods than America does. The leverage runs in both directions.

China also consumes more energy than the United States and Russia combined (8,894,000 GWh, compared with the U.S.’s 4,085,000 GWh and Russia’s 1,011,000 GWh). 

It reflects the manufacturing intensity of an economy that produces approximately 65% of U.S. GDP but requires 218% of U.S. energy to do so.

Yet Chinese citizens earn $13,660 on average, less than Russia’s $15,320 and a fraction of America’s $83,490. 

China’s aggregate economic scale is enormous because of population size (1.409 billion people generating $18.74 trillion in GDP produces a lower per-capita income than 143.5 million Russians generating $2.17 trillion).