US-China Economic Gap Widens; China Misses Turning Point in Prosperity

China revised its GDP growth expectation for 2023; its GDP was only about 77 percent of the US GDP in 2021

A clerk counts stacks of Chinese yuan and U.S. dollars at a bank in Shanghai, on July 22, 2005. China Photos/Getty Images

News Analysis

China’s economy is growing stagnant, with the GDP growth prediction for 2023 officially assessed as the lowest in 30 years, indicating a total economic decline after the COVID-19 outbreak. Such a slump means a widening gap with the United States and a reversal of previous projections by economists that the Chinese economy would be on par with the United States by 2025 or 2030.