China to surpass US by 2020: report
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With faster expansion and its currency's appreciation, China will overtake the US to become the world's largest economy by 2020, Standard Chartered Plc said in a report published Monday, according to Bloomberg.
"We believe that the world is in a 'super-cycle' of sustained high growth," economists led by Standard Chartered's chief economist, Gerard Lyons, said in the 152-page Super-Cycle Report.
"The scale of change over the next 20 years will be enormous," the report said.
China's economy will be twice as large as that of the US by 2030 and account for 24 percent of global output, up from 9 percent today, the report estimated.
Jim O'Neill, head of Global Economics and Strategy Research for Goldman Sachs, predicted last year that "by 2027, China, growing at over 10 percent per year, could be the largest economy in the world."
Conference Board, a New York-based research institution, said Thursday in its annual Global Economic Outlook that China's economy may top the US' in 2012, based on a measure to compare the real purchasing power of the two countries' currencies.
"No matter if it is intentional or not, these research institutes are indeed creating a 'public opinion bubble' by setting up a topic to discuss China's fast-expanding economy," said Jiang Yong, director of the Center for Economic Security Studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations.
"Logically, the public will be led to discuss China's intention behind its fast-growing economy and whether a stronger China is playing games under international rules that were established by Western countries," Jiang said. "Only a flood of public opinion could drown China."
Former Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer also said Sunday that "no economy and no market has ever grown without interruption," and China was no exception.
Downer said China faces looming challenges, including an aging population, a fragile banking system and keeping a vast country together politically.
Jiang echoed Downer's remarks.
"China's economy is still growing in an extensive way and depending heavily on exports. It is facing an abrupt stop triggered by the burst of financial asset bubbles, and it is becoming more and more likely to happen," Jiang said.
"China, though, must beat history," Bloomberg columnist William Pesek said. "Only the most cynical and short-sighted among us would want China to fail. A fifth of humanity enmeshed in crisis is in no one's best interest."
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