In Foreign Policy, Robert Fogel makes a prediction about the Chinese economy 30 years down the road:
In 2040, the Chinese economy will reach $123 trillion, or nearly three times the economic output of the entire globe in 2000. China’s per capita income will hit $85,000, more than double the forecast for the European Union, and also much higher than that of India and Japan. In other words, the average Chinese megacity dweller will be living twice as well as the average Frenchman when China goes from a poor country in 2000 to a superrich country in 2040. Although it will not have overtaken the United States in per capita wealth, according to my forecasts, China’s share of global GDP — 40 percent — will dwarf that of the United States (14 percent) and the European Union (5 percent) 30 years from now. This is what economic hegemony will look like.
Most accounts of China’s economic ascent offer little but vague or threatening generalities, and they usually grossly underestimate the extent of the rise — and how fast it’s coming. (For instance, a recent study by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace predicts that by 2050, China’s economy will be just 20 percent larger than that of the United States.) Such accounts fail to fully credit the forces at work behind China’s recent success or understand how those trends will shape the future. Even China’s own economic data in some ways actually underestimate economic outputs.
Also from Korean paper Chosun.com:
In 30 years the Chinese economy “will reach US$123 trillion,” writes Robert Fogel, a Nobel laureate in economics and professor at the University of Chicago, in an article in the January issue of Foreign Policy magazine.
This means China will account for 40 percent of the world’s GDP in 2040, dwarfing the U.S. (14 percent) as the world’s largest economy. “Fogel’s GDP estimate, which is apparently based on purchasing power parity, is remarkable as only a decade ago China’s PPP-based GDP was merely half that of the U.S.
“China’s per capita income will hit $85,000, more than double the forecast for the European Union” and much higher than that of Japan, although lower than that of the U.S., Fogel forecasts.
