China passed Japan in 2010 to become the second-largest economy in the world based upon nominal (exchange rate) GDP. China may not pass the United States to become the world’s largest economy until 2030 or later.
In 2019, the IMF has China’s economy at 67% of the size of the US economy and 69% if Hong Kong and Macau are included. The IMF projection for 2024 is for China to reach about 82% of the US economy. If the same rate of catch up is maintained then China (with Hong Kong and Macau) and the USA will be within plus or minus 5% for several years around 2030. This could last from 2029-2037.
From 1999-2010, China moved up from the seventh-largest economy to the second largest. India moved up from the 13th largest to ninth largest. There were more shifts with the far stronger economic growth in Asia and China’s double-digit growth.
There is far slower movement in economic power now with strong economies growing at 5-7% per year GDP growth and slower growing developed economies at 1-3% per year GDP growth.
India will have moved up from the 9th largest economy to the 5th largest economy. India should become the fifth-largest economy on an exchange rate basis at the end of 2019. It will then take another 5-7 years for India to pass Germany for fourth and then another few years to pass Japan for third.
India and China have both had their economic statistics called into question. Both may be overestimating their GDP by 10-25%.
It is taking many years for small moves up the rankings of the largest national economies.
Brazil is edging up slightly ahead of Italy. South Korea, Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam and the Philippines are moving up the global economic rankings. Indonesia and the other ASEAN countries are fairly consistently reaching 5-7% per year GDP growth. Ethiopia is moving up as well.
The static nature of the future world economy could shift if some countries are able to adopt new fast-growing technologies like self-driving cars, anti-aging, nanotechnology and AI and other countries fall behind.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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We will see what the rankings are after the next “Great Depression”. Some nations will fall apart while some will just take a slight beating.
That must be why China rules the seas and has America over a barrel when it comes to trade. /s It must frustrate the CCP to no end that the stupid Americans continue to dominate the planet.
BTW i *think* the numbers in the tables are GDP in millions of dollars, but it would be nice to have that explicitly stated.
Point taken, but median wage plus government services received is probably an even more important metric. Corporate earnings are counted into average per capita numbers, and some countries have national healthcare while others do not.
Isn’t it just a matter that the current top rankings happen to have large gaps between the positions. So even with a few % per year growth differential it takes many years to overtake a country that is eg. 40% larger.
You are saying his oranges are wrong, and giving apples as proof…
GDP Nominal is not the same as GDP PPP.
I guess the Elephant in the Fruit Mart is that the relative rankings ARE long term static projected. I wouldn’t have believed it 4 years ago actually.
If if the study isn’t bunkum then the cause for this new projected future aught to be CLEARLY illucidated. It’s a new position.
“If the same rate of catch up is maintained then China ” Everyone knows that will not happen. China’s is in a perpetual slow down trend while US is stable growth.
Your figures are wrong.
Chinese economy is by far the first in the world:
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/208rank.html
Or ever. Look at the demographics. Plus, the whole surveillance state thing and the new emperor-for-life is probably not what they need.
Has anyone done a study of IMF estimates to see how far off they are over time? Please post a link if you find it.
Having a large marketshare/economy lets a country influence the world in ways more subtle than open warfare. For example, Hollywood movies are already making changes to appease the Chinese censors in ways they wouldn’t have 20 years ago. Or more importantly, China’s growing economy gives them the money to get influence and control over all sorts of mining operations in Africa, giving them a lot more political leverage in other ways. That sort of power can easily lead to China getting unequal trade deals & the like, that enrich them but make your country poorer.
Overproduction and shadow banking risks upsetting the entire apple cart. Hong Kong wants out and the world is watching. With GDP growth closer to 1% per year than to 6.5% the projections are dubious.
What is this GDP circlejerk on this site? Yes, it is important, but not that much. The most important metric for the individual is GDP per capita (nominal/PPP).
I am from a small 5 million EU country. I am pretty sure that there are many african or asian countries that have many times larger GDP than ours. But who cares? It is still better in every way to live here as compared to there. Because per capita they are poor.
Also it doesn’t matter in a war that much. If there would be a wa.r between large countries, then nuclear weapons level the field anyway.
So what is the advantage of it?
And yes, this is all a good thing. I hope they continue this path.