China will overtake the United States to become the world’s biggest economy in 2028, five years earlier than previously estimated due to the contrasting recoveries of the two countries from the COVID-19 pandemic, the United Kingdom-based Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) said in an annual report published on Saturday.
The CEBR said China's "skilful management of the pandemic" and the long-term impact the pandemic will have on Western growth means China's "relative performance has improved."
“Thanks to a strict early response, China has managed to avoid re-introducing the harshest pandemic-fighting measures after the first wave and, unlike most other advanced economies, has avoided a recession in 2020. We expect the United States’ share of global GDP to decline from 2021 onwards, and for the country to eventually be overtaken by China as the world’s largest economy,” the CEBR said in the report.
"We now think that the Chinese economy in dollar terms will overtake the US economy in 2028, a full 5 years earlier than we thought last year," the report noted.
In contrast, the US is projected to grow by an annual 1.9% from 2022 to 2024 and then by 1.6% following a "strong post-pandemic rebound" next year.
The US is the world's most impacted country having lost more than 330,000 lives to the pandemic and recorded nearly 19 million infections since the beginning of the outbreak, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.
