ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces some concepts and a framework for evaluating economic modernization. It utilizes these concepts to evaluate the economic growth of several groups of countries. The chapter aims to apply these same concepts to Communist China for the periods before and after 1978. The experts use national income accounting measures to evaluate the performance of economic development, but these indicators fail to account for some aspects of modern growth that many regard as important, such as the sources of growth, income distribution, welfare trends, and destruction of physical environment. Minimal destruction to the physical environment would attest to the superior performance of a modernizing economy. The opposite normative findings would suggest a poor or very inferior economic performance. Great Britain’s industrial revolution began around the middle of the eighteenth century, but trend acceleration commenced after 1800. Germany’s trend acceleration began after 1860 and continued until World War I.
