Reply to Why did Canada and the US thrive compared to Spanish/Portuguese former colonies in the Americas?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It makes more sense that it is geography and resources that makes a difference. China and India have been the two greatest economies because they have large area with fertile soil plains fed by huge Perennial Himalayan rivers. Hence they always had(have) huge population which in turn creates a large internal market for them to produce and consume, propelling the economy forward.

US has relatively usable area(with plains) with fertile eastern half with big size and big resources. Canada is also very flat with enough water resources to produce large aomount of grains. It also benefited from the cold and only the brave venture there. Spanish went to Canada but found it too cold and went to Latin America. South America is bad terrain. It has either the Andes, Thick Amazonian forests or deserts for the most part. THEY LACK PLAINS and arable land..[/quote]

China actually has very little arable land that is suited for growing crops in relation to its land mass and large population. Food insecurity has been driving Chinese policy for millennia. It's why the Chinese have long been prolific sea traders and spread Chinese populations to many other areas of the Asian continent.

So yes, while China does have the largest amount of growing lands it is woefully inadequate for its population size and generally a smaller percentage of total land compared to pretty much a

[quote][i]

Agricultural regions of Mainland China in 1986
Although China's agricultural output is the largest in the world, only about 15% of its total land area can be cultivated. China's arable land, which represents 10% of the total arable land in the world, supports over 20% of the world's population.[citation needed] Of this approximately 1.4 million square kilometers of arable land, only about 1.2% (116,580 square kilometers) permanently supports crops and 525,800 square kilometers are irrigated.[citation needed] The land is divided into approximately 200 million households, with an average land allocation of just 0.65 hectares (1.6 acres).

China's limited space for farming has been a problem throughout its history, leading to chronic food shortage and famine. While the production efficiency of farmland has grown over time, efforts to expand to the west and the north have met with limited success, as such land is generally colder and drier than traditional farmlands to the east. Since the 1950s, farm space has also been pressured by the increasing land needs of industry and cities.[/i][/quote]

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