When is 53% extraordinary?

The share of our economy taken up by the government (ie the public sector) is now 53 per cent; in Communist China the figure is 25 per cent. Even at the peak of the Soviet Union the figure was only 70 per cent. At the height of Britain’s economic power in the Victorian era, the figure was 10 per cent. James Delingpole

I don't know where the information comes from to back these figures up. Are they right? 

But if they are anything close to being right then it is extraordinary:

a) that this is the case and b) that this isn't seen by most people as extraordinary (and extraordinarily bad at that!).