China's economic scale likely to catch up with U.S. by 2030, economist

By around 2030 China's economic scale is hopeful to catch up with the United States, but this is based on some conditions, Lin Yifu, a famed scholar on institutional economics and director of the China Center for Economic Research, Peking University, boldly predicted on August 20.

Lin made the remark towards hundred-strong scholars and officials from home and abroad at the "First Forum on China Studies" opened in Shanghai. He believes that per capita income is one of good indexes measuring a country's technological level. He predicts that by 2030 the per capita income in China is likely to be around 20 percent that of the United States, which may even reach 40 percent. Since China's population is five times that of the United States, its economic scale may catch up with the latter.

His judgments and predictions stem from some successful experience of East Asia regions, Lin said. Over half a century, a batch of economies of emerging industries rose in this area. Firstly Japan, followed by the "Asian four tigers". Of their per capita income Japan overtook the United States as early as in 1988 while Singapore did so in 1996. The vigorous, rapid economic development in these countries and regions, as researches showed, benefited from a common element that they are all under the influence of the Confucianists culture.

Based on the pursuit of reform and opening up and the maintenance of political stability, Lin said, if the country can give full play to the Confucians tradition of "absorbing and merging with foreign experience in a creative way", China is sure to push forward the national economy through the introduction of advanced technologies even if it might still lag behind developed countries in this regard by 2030.

By People's Daily Online