{"id":1474720,"date":"2024-01-31T18:18:36","date_gmt":"2024-01-31T18:18:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rfa.org\/english\/news\/china\/economy-sullivan-gdp-01312024131812.html"},"modified":"2024-01-31T18:18:36","modified_gmt":"2024-01-31T18:18:36","slug":"us-official-china-may-never-surpass-americas-economy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2024\/01\/31\/us-official-china-may-never-surpass-americas-economy\/","title":{"rendered":"US official: China may never surpass America\u2019s economy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n

China\u2019s economy may never surpass the size of America\u2019s, with long-running predictions of a flip at the top of the world pecking order repeatedly pushed back, a White House official said Tuesday.<\/span><\/p>\n

With \u201cthe strongest post-pandemic recovery and among the lowest inflation of any leading economy in the world,\u201d the United States has been \u201cshowing its capacity for resilience and reinvention\u201d while China struggles, U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said.<\/span><\/p>\n

The comments came days after a Hong Kong court <\/span>ordered the liquidation<\/span><\/a> of Chinese real estate giant Evergrande \u2013 which still owes more than US$300 billion to investors \u2013 and amid broader problems, with official youth unemployment figures recently <\/span>as high as 20%<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Speaking at a Council on Foreign Relations <\/span>event<\/span><\/a> in Washington on the future of U.S.-China relations, Sullivan said he rejected the notion that \u201cthe East was rising and the West was falling\u201d and that China\u2019s annual gross domestic product was destined to overtake America\u2019s.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"ENG_CHN_JakeSullivan_01312024.2.jpg\"<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFor years, economists were predicting that the PRC would overtake the United States in GDP, either in this decade or the next,\u201d Sullivan noted, using an acronym for the People\u2019s Republic of China.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cNow those projections are moving further and further out,\u201d he said. It was becoming possible that \u201cthat moment may never come,\u201d he added, with the Chinese economy facing \u201cits own set of challenges.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

U.S. annual GDP currently stands at approximately <\/span>$28 trillion<\/span><\/a>, compared with China\u2019s roughly <\/span>$18.5 trillion<\/span><\/a>, according to International Monetary Fund figures. America\u2019s economy last year also grew at a rate of about 6.3% in nominal terms \u2013 that is, not accounting for inflation \u2013 which unexpectedly <\/span>outpaced<\/span><\/a> China\u2019s growth of 4.6%.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, China\u2019s economy has grown at a far greater rate than the U.S. economy over the past 35 years: In 1990, China\u2019s economy was less than 10% of the size of America\u2019s, according to <\/span>the IMF<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018An armchair analyst\u2019<\/b><\/p>\n

Despite his comments, Sullivan said he did not want to \u201cget myself in trouble\u201d or \u201cmake news\u201d by hamfistedly evaluating China\u2019s economy, noting that many experts differed markedly in their analyses.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI just don't see a huge amount of upside in the U.S. national security adviser kind of holding forth as an armchair analyst on China's economy,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

He said he just wanted to reject \u201cthe conventional wisdom about relative trajectories of the U.S. and the PRC.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The idea that China could only rise and that the United States was destined to recede had been \u201copenly proclaimed\u201d in Beijing until recently, Sullivan explained, but President Joe Biden had long stressed this was not a fundamental characteristic of ties.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe president didn\u2019t accept that, I didn\u2019t accept that and our team did not,\u201d he said. \u201cWe continue to push back against this idea.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The U.S. national security adviser also defended a slew of policies intended to shore-up national security by <\/span>reducing America\u2019s trade reliance<\/span><\/a> on China and by <\/span>subsidizing<\/span><\/a> key industries such as microchip manufacturing, which Beijing has said is economically damaging.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sullivan said he discussed that with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi <\/span>in Bangkok last week<\/span><\/a>, with both sides offering views about where \u201cthe boundary between economics and national security\u201d should lie.<\/span><\/p>\n

But he acknowledged they did not have \u201ccompletely converging perspectives\u201d on the issue, or even who was most at fault.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFor a very long time, the PRC has taken measures on explicit grounds of national security that have had an adverse impact on American workers, American businesses, and the American economy,\u201d he said. \u201cSo this cannot be a one-way street of a conversation.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Edited by Malcolm Foster.<\/b><\/p>\n \n \n


\r\nThis content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia<\/a> and was authored by By Alex Willemyns for RFA.
<\/p>\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The comments follow Monday\u2019s collapse of Chinese real estate giant Evergrande with more than $300 billion in debt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29440,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1280,2242,190,1077,42620,1863,42635,43973,785,27149,27150,70560],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1474720"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29440"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1474720"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1474720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1474721,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1474720\/revisions\/1474721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1474720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1474720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1474720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}