China economy ‘to overtake US by 2019’

China will overtake the United States economically within six years, an official research institute predicts, and go on to become the world’s most important country in three decades more, state media said.

The findings came from the Nation’s Health Report issued by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Global Times said, without giving details of the criteria used for the prediction.

China’s economy would be larger than that of the U.S. by 2019, it cited the document as saying, and China’s “international status” would exceed that of the U.S. by 2049, the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic.

“National health” was defined as a country’s “overall conditions… using resource sufficiency and wealth distribution as the major criteria”, the Global Times said, but did not go into specifics.

China ranked as the 11th “healthiest” country out of some 100 nations, it said, just behind Costa Rica, with Sweden in top position.

The official Xinhua news agency said China was given a national health status of “up to standard”, though the U.S., Japan and Britain were deemed “health deficient”.

The report could not immediately be independently obtained from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

China’s stunning economic growth rates, increases in military spending and overlapping security interests in the Asia-Pacific region with the U.S. have sparked concerns the countries could find themselves increasingly at odds in coming decades as they jockey for global influence.

But the Global Times, which has close ties to China’s ruling Communist Party, said the document’s findings were seen by some as overly nationalistic.

“The report is indicative of an anti-U.S. sentiment in Chinese society,” Fang Zhouzi, described as a prominent whistleblower on academic fraud, told the paper.

“It casts the U.S. as a potential threat and links the goals of China’s national revival to surpassing the U.S.,” he added. AFP

FACTS & FIGURES

International analysts widely expect China’s economy, given its high growth rates, to overtake the U.S. in terms of gross domestic product, or total size, some time in the first half of this century; though differ on exact timing and criteria. The Telegraph

A U.S. intelligence report said in December that China’s economy is likely to surpass the United States in less than two decades while Asia will overtake North America and Europe combined in global power by 2030. Reuters

China will have a bigger influence than the U.S. or Europe over the economies of developing nations as the world’s largest exporter increases its contribution to global growth, according to HSBC.

China’s economic growth is set to accelerate to 8.6 percent this year, from 7.8 percent in 2012, a rate of growth that will benefit neighboring countries and commodities-rich nations. Bloomberg

Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, Chile, Kazakhstan and Saudi Arabia have increased their exports to China while exports by the U.S. and the U.K. to the Asian country represent less than 1 percent of their respective GDPs.