The deceleration in the Chinese economy over the last decade has raised concerns about the sustainability of the Chinese economic "miracle". But is that deceleration unusual when compared to other countries? What is to be expected in the coming years? Economists like to look at emerging markets through the lens of the convergence model (based on the work of Robert Solow). Successful emerging economies are supposed to grow faster than advanced economies and catch up. But as the process of catching up materializes, growth will slow down and over time will approach that of the most advanced economies. How does China compares to other successful emerging economies? It is not easy to find a perfect historical example for China but South Korea comes the closest. It is a successful converging economy in Asia and it is a fairly large economy (unlike Singapore or Hong Kong, two other successful converging economies). We start by focusing on the period 1980-2018 and use GDP per hour as...