China's GDP has surpassed that of the European Union for the first time in 2021, one year earlier than previously estimated. The 27-member EU posted a preliminary annual GDP growth of 5.2%, which translates into a GDP of €14.09 trillion, roughly USD15.73 trillion in current dollars, below China's USD18 trillion GDP recorded in 2021. China beat market expectations with an 8.1% growth for 2021, with GDP reaching CNY114.37 trillion, according to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). Analysts said overtaking the EU in terms of GDP is a milestone event, meaning China is now the world's second-largest economy in every sense, even compared with a giant economic bloc such as the EU.
The EU was for some time the world's largest economy, even larger than that of the U.S. The withdrawal of the UK from the EU, which was a USD2.7 trillion economy in 2020, prompted analysts to forecast China overtaking the bloc. The EU's GDP in the first quarter of 2021 outstripped that of China, but the Chinese economy has been expanding at a faster rate after that. Cui Hongjian, Director of the Department of European Studies at the China Institute of International Studies, said that the EU's lack of a strong internet and digital economy also accelerated China's overtaking of the bloc. However, Chinese analysts said policymakers are no longer obsessed with the GPD growth rate, shifting their attention to achieving higher quality growth and sustainability.
It should be noted that, on a per capita basis, China still lags behind the U.S. and the EU. In 2020, average per capita GDP of the EU is about 3.6 times China's, while the figure of the U.S. is about 6 times China's. In 2021, China's GDP per capita was around USD12,551, nearing that of a “high-income country” as defined by the World Bank and overtaking the global average GDP per capita, the Global Times reports.
