China will overtake the US to become the world's largest economy by 2028, five years earlier than previously¹ forecast, a report says.

 

一份报告称，2028年中国将超越美国成为全球最大经济体，比原先预测的提早五年。

 

The UK-based Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) said China's "skilful²" management of Covid-19 would boost its relative growth compared to the US and Europe in coming years.

 

 

Meanwhile India is tipped to become the third largest economy by 2030.

 

The CEBR releases its economic league table every year on 26 December.

 

Although China was the first country hit by Covid-19, it controlled the disease through swift and extremely strict action, meaning it did not need to repeat economically paralysing lockdowns as European countries have done.

 

As a result, unlike other major economies, it has avoided an economic recession in 2020 and is in fact estimated to see growth of 2% this year.

 

The US economy, by contrast, has been hit hard by the world's worst coronavirus epidemic³ in terms of sheer numbers. More than 330,000 people have died in the US and there have been some 18.5 million confirmed cases.

 

The economic damage has been cushioned by monetary⁴ policy and a huge fiscal⁵ stimulus⁶, but political disagreements over a new stimulus package could leave around 14 million Americans without unemployment benefit payments in the new year.

 

The report says that after "a strong post-pandemic rebound⁷ in 2021", the US economy will grow by about 1.9% annually⁸ from 2022-24 and then slow to 1.6% in the years after that.

 

By contrast the Chinese economy is tipped to grow by 5.7% annually until 2025, and 4.5% annually from 2026-2030.

 

China's share of the world economy has risen from just 3.6% in 2000 to 17.8% now and the country will become a "high-income economy" by 2023, the report says.

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