1. Beyond the United States: an enduring theme in the forecasting community
What will China's future be like? If and when will it be correct again? The dominance of this little blue planet is an enduring topic for experts and scholars at home and abroad, especially for forecasters.
Prediction 1: Since 2003, Goldman Sachs has published a series of research reports on the development of China, Russia, India, and Brazil (collectively known as BRICs). The report stated that as long as the current development trend is maintained, the world economic landscape will undergo amazing changes in the next few decades; among them, China's economic scale will expand rapidly, surpassing the United Kingdom in 2005, Germany in 2007, and Germany in 2016. Japan. Finally, and the most exciting moment comes: surpassing the United States in 2041. In other words, a brand new world will be revealed in front of people ("Dreaming with BRICs: The Road to 2050", "BRICs and World Markets: Crude Oil, Automobiles and Capital", etc.).
Prediction 2: In September 2005, the Central Bank of Korea released an annual report predicting that China’s GDP will surpass Japan’s in 2020 and catch up with the United States in 2040; by then, China’s GDP will account for one-fifth of the world’s GDP one. (Report on the Future of the Asian Economy by the Financial and Economic Research Institute of the Central Bank of Korea)
This is nothing special. Relatively speaking, these are still "pessimistic". More optimistic predictions include:
First, in 1996, the Rand Corporation of the United States made a prediction about China's long-term trend from 1994 to 2015. They claimed that : According to the PPP method, with an average growth rate of 4.9%, China's per capita GDP will rise to 25.6% of that of the United States by 2010, surpassing the latter in total.
Second, the World Bank published a report titled "China in 2020" in 1997, assuming that China's average annual GDP growth rate would gradually slow down from 8.4% to 5% thereafter. By 2020, China's GDP will greatly exceed that of the United States, with per capita GDP equivalent to half of the current level of the United States. In addition, the report also predicts that China may become the world's second largest importer and exporter by 2020.
Third, in 1997, the "Rising Asia" report published by the Asian Development Bank made three possible estimates of China's economic development trends: The first is an optimistic scenario. During the period from 1995 to 2025, per capita The GDP growth rate is 6.6%; the second is the pessimistic scenario, the per capita GDP growth rate is 4.4% during 1995-2025; the third is the basic scenario, the per capita GDP growth rate is 6.05% during the 1995-2025 period. According to the third plan, by 2025, China's per capita GDP will be equivalent to 38.2% of that of the United States, and China's population will still be more than four times that of the United States by then. In other words, the total GDP will be more than 1.5 times that of the United States.
Fourth, the most representative one is Ange Madison, an expert on the history of economics from the OECD. In the book "China's Long-term Economic Operation" published in 1998, Madison predicted that between 1995 and 2010, China's average annual GDP growth rate would gradually decline from 7.5% in 1978 to 1995 to 5.5%, and the per capita GDP growth rate would drop from approximately 6.04% gradually dropped to 4.5%. Calculated according to the PPP method, China's total GDP will exceed that of the United States by 2015, accounting for approximately 17% of the world's total GDP.
Fifth, in 2004, economist Hu Angang also predicted again that China's GDP would account for 22% of the world's GDP by 2020, surpassing the United States.
In fact, according to the PPP law, it is indeed not difficult for China to surpass the United States. According to data released by the International Monetary Fund, China's GDP in 1990 was US$1,520.6 billion, which increased to US$7,334.3 billion in 2004, with an average annual growth rate of 11.89%. At this rate, it will reach US$14,395.3 billion by 2010, approaching the GDP size of the United States by then, and will reach more than US$25 trillion by 2015, leaving the United States far behind.
There are so many different speakers who can’t agree on one thing. Can China surpass the United States? When will it surpass the United States? The author believes: There is no doubt that the time is 2019.
2. Surpassing the United States: Results derived from mathematical models
In the two articles "Forecast of China's Economic Scale in 2020" and "Beyond Japan in 2010", I used the "Comprehensive Development Model" It is calculated that by 2019, my country’s GDP is forecast to reach US$17.18 trillion at the low end, US$23.62 trillion at the mid-range forecast, and US$32.42 trillion at the high end. Even according to the low forecast, it will surpass the United States and rank first in the world.
The core idea of ??the comprehensive development model is that the annual comprehensive development rate (also known as the nominal growth rate) of an economy’s GDP in U.S. dollars is composed of four parts, namely: It is composed of economic growth rate, inflation rate, exchange rate change rate and statistical caliber adjustment coefficient.