Yes, China will overtake the US but its economic growth will stop eventually. Here’s why

There are three great weaknesses in the Chinese economy. Two it is aware of, but the third is unspoken – and will be its undoing

Hamish McRae
Tuesday 01 October 2019 17:34 BST
Comments
China displays military might in 70th anniversary parade

Xi Jinping is right. He declared yesterday, at the rally celebrating the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, that “no force can shake the status of this great nation”.

If you take as status that China will, in about 10 years’ time, become the world’s largest economy it is hard to see any set of circumstances that will stop that happening. If things go really wrong for China, then this could take a few more years than that. But it is going to happen in the foreseeable future, so the rest of us had better get used to it.

We had better get used to the idea that if the world’s largest economy is China (and the third largest after the US as number two is India) that many of the west’s ideas of how societies should operate will be challenged. There will be a parallel with the influence of Russia on the west during the Cold War, when some people felt that the Russian model was superior to that of the US and European ones. The Russian economy collapsed and its empire in eastern Europe with it. It was, in any case, always smaller than that of the US – but China won’t be.

Join our commenting forum

Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies

Comments

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in