US-China Barometer 2022

Benjamin Leffel & John Graham

As the world's two largest economies emerge from the pandemic, we observe the latest trends in China and the U.S. across economic, environmental, demographic, political and technological subject areas in a user-friendly fashion. Our Harvard Business Review article using previous U.S.-China Barometer data continues to be relevant, as our data-driven approach helps show that trade is not a zero-sum game, and interdependencies can help or hurt both countries.

Our 2022 Barometer is a statistical compendium of U.S.-China relations that is divided into two parts: Comparisons, which observes differences between both countries along a range of attributes, and Interactions, which examines the ways and extent to which both countries are connected to one another. The “Notes” section attached to each slide contains detailed commentary.

A few of the many trends we observe in the 2022 Barometer include:

1. 2021 unemployment rates decreased in both countries, suggesting recovery in the labor market.
2. 2021 trade similarly rebounded from it's pandemic induced low in 2020.
3. China's fiscal centralization under Xi Jinping continues, with the central government claiming more tax revenue than provincial and local governments.
4. The Environmental Performance Index scores for both countries dropped in 2022, continuing the previous years' downward trend.
5. Renewable energy constitutes an increasing share, and fossil fuel a decreasing share, of total electricity generation in both countries from the previous year, continuing the trend in renewable energy transition.

We deliver the Barometer as a powerpoint presentation with interpretive notes and the data sets imbedded (right click then choose “edit data”). Users and viewers are most welcome to adapt the presentation to their own purposes, in exchange we ask that you do not change the original data. We expect and seek your criticism so that we might improve the Barometer in future years. Feel free to send comments to Ben Leffel at bleffel@umich.edu (Twitter: @BenjaminJLeffel) or John L. Graham at jgraham@uci.edu