China's economy to become world's biggest in 2035

Washington, July 9 : China's economy will overtake that of the United States by 2035 and be twice its size by 2050, a study released Tuesday by a US research organization concluded.

News agencies quoted a report by economist Albert Keidel of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace as saying that China's rapid growth is driven by domestic demand more than exports, which will be sustainable over the coming decades.

"Its (China's) growth this decade has averaged more than 10 percent a year and is still going strong in the first half of 2008. Because its success in recent decades has not been export-led but driven by domestic demand, its rapid growth can continue well into the 21st century, unfettered by world market limitation," said Keidel, who has previously worked as a World Bank economist and as a U.S. Treasury official.

Under current market-based estimates, China's gross domestic product is about three trillion dollars compared to 14 trillion for the United States.

Based on a more controversial purchasing power parity (PPP) measure used by the World Bank and others to correct low labour-cost distortions, he said China's GDP is roughly half of that of the United States. Keidel's calculations suggest that using the PPP method, China will catch up with the United States as an economic power by 2020, with an equivalent GDP of 18 trillion dollars.

Based on the more commonly accepted market method, the turning point will come by 2035. By 2050, he estimated Chinese GDP at some 82 trillion dollars compared with 44 trillion for the United States.

ANI