China’s economy, currently the second-largest in the world, will surpass the United States’ by the end of the decade, according to forecasts from a couple of European firms.
The Chinese government will rely on state investment, high-tech development and domestic consumption to grow GDP 5.7% each year through 2025 and 4.7% annually through 2030, the UK-based Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) forecasted in its report. Euler Hermes, a credit insurance firm based in France, made a similar projection.
The forecasts were cited by Voice of America, which spoke with CEBR founder Douglas McWilliams. “There is no gold medal or anything like that,” he said. “But when you’ve got more money to spend, you do have the ability to influence things, and China will have that ability to influence things.”
China, he added, would be better positioned to advance its Belt and Road Initiative, a project that calls for building of land and sea trade routes through Asia, Europe and Africa.
Denny Roy, senior fellow at the East-West Center think tank in Honolulu, told VOA the Chinese government has “unfettered domestic political power” to make economic investments that advance the leadership’s political objectives.
“The result of that expectation (China surpassing the United States economically) has been a bolder PRC (People’s Republic of China) foreign policy that seeks to settle regional disputes in China’s favor and to de-legitimize U.S. regional and global leadership under the assumption that China is destined to set the new rules of international relations,” he said.
Read more at Voice of America.