Is China overtaking the US as a financial and economic power?

Despite World Bank figures, the US remains far ahead of China in the metric that counts

The World Bank's International Comparison Program has just released its latest measures of price levels and GDP across 176 countries - and the results are striking. For the first time, the ICP finds that China's total real (inflation-adjusted) income is slightly larger than that of the US. In purchasing power parity (PPP) terms, China's 2017 GDP was $19.617tn (15.7tn), whereas the US's stood at $19.519tn

Of course, when China's total income is divided by its massive population, the picture changes. Although China's per capita income has pulled ahead of Egypt's, it remains in the middle of the pack globally, behind Brazil, Iran, Thailand and Mexico.

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