It’s an irreversible trend for China’s economy to catch up with the US’

A view of Shanghai, China's major financial hub and destination for foreign investment Photo:VCG

Last year, due to multiple temporary reasons, the increment of the nominal GDP of the US was slightly larger than China's. Previously, there were always unfavorable factors for China's economy every year, but not only China's GDP growth rate exceeded that of the US but also its actual increment is bigger than the US' and that has lasted for quite some years. Therefore, China's GDP growth rate of 3 percent was higher than the US' 2.1 percent last year, but the increment of the US' GDP slightly surpassed China's. This is worth paying attention to.

Last year, the US boasted that its GDP growth rate might surpass China's for the first time since 1976. President Biden himself made such prediction twice, but that wish turned to be a mirage. It is believed that China's GDP growth rate and actual increment will once again surpass the US' this year, continuing the strong momentum of catching up with the US in terms of total economic size. I believe it won't happen again this year that actual increment of China's GDP being lower than US'. This year, China's GDP is expected to grow by around 5 percent, while the US is only expected to grow by 0.5 percent, indicating a huge gap. Moreover, the possibility of China's growth exceeding expectations is bigger than that of the US, as around 5 percent is clearly a conservative figure. 

A significant source of China's social confidence is the consistently strong economic growth, which has led to a clear trend of narrowing the gap between China and the US in terms of GDP, as well as the transformation of people's lives in the field of livelihoods. The Chinese people have jointly joined the trend of modernization.

China's development potential is in a stage of continuous release, far from being exhausted. It is necessary to ensure that the momentum of development is sufficient and powerful. It has become a global expectation that China's total economic size will surpass that of the US in the next decade or so, and as long as China focuses on developing itself well, this result will be achieved naturally. Those who recently claimed that China will lose the hope of surpassing the US in total economic size due to its declining population and technology decoupling are wishful thinking of some elites in the US and the West. They want to undermine China's social confidence. What we need to do is to speak with facts and make their schemes fail.

It is worth emphasizing that once China's total economic size surpasses that of the US in about a decade, although there is still gap in terms of overall strength between China and the US and China's per capita GDP is only one-quarter that of the US, it will be a significant tipping point, and many things will change in ways we may not have imagined today. The world will believe that it is an irreversible trend for  China to be the world No.1 economy again, and many countries, including some Western countries, will change their attitudes towards China. The situation of ideological competition will also change in a way that favors China. China's strategic initiative will take a significant step forward, and the social confidence of the Chinese people will also take a huge boost.

The author is a commentator with the Global Times. [email protected]