Debate on largest economy pointless

As China's GDP growth rate, despite entering the "new normal", continues to exceed that of the United States, the country is fast approaching the most anticipated milestone. Depending on how one measures GDP and what adjustments are made, some studies predict that China will become the world's largest economy in a few years, while other studies — which use purchasing power parity-adjusted measures — claim this has already happened.

On a per capita basis, China's GDP is about $6,500 compared with about $45,000 of the United States, that is, seven times smaller. If one uses the PPP-adjusted methodology, then the per capita GDP ratio of US to China is reduced to about 4 times. It is at this point in the analysis that the population ratio of China to the US (4.2 times) kicks in to make the Chinese economy appear larger than that of the US.

But this logic is faulty. One uses PPP-adjusted per capita GDP figures to try to compare the living standard of the average citizen, instead of comparing country-level aggregate numbers. Hence, the conclusion that China is now the world's largest economy, on a PPP-adjusted basis, makes little sense. It would be better to just say, "the economic purchasing power of the average US citizen is four times that of the Chinese people", for it better represents the economic gap that still exists between the two countries.

To put this into a historic perspective, in the 1950s the ratio of per capita GPD between the US and Japan was just more than four times, and that is without adjusting for PPP. In other words, China's level of development today is equivalent, at best, to that of Japan more than half a century ago, and it is, and is likely to remain in the medium term, a developing country.

Even China's top leadership has repeatedly said that one of the main goals of economic development is to make China a moderately well-off (or xiao kang) society. This is a very reasonable and reachable goal, a far cry from the over-optimistic and counter-productive slogans and policies adopted at the end of the 1950s.

Still, China has become a world power, a direct result of its huge population that magnifies every statistics 1.3 billion times. The one figure representative of the last 35 years of reforms is the amount of foreign exchange reserves ($3.88 trillion in October 2014). To put this in proper perspective, when Deng Xiaoping visited the US in 1979, the Chinese government is said to have just enough foreign exchange reserves to pay for his and the accompanying delegation's plane fare.

But unlike other achievements that China has boasted of in the past, the roles are inverted this time around. It is the West that continually talks about China becoming the largest economy in the world, while the Chinese leadership keeps playing down the issue. The leadership's main worries are different: the low per capita income, the still large rural population, low average schooling level, massive environmental damage, corruption, interest groups, lack of truly innovative industries — with some exceptions — and the holy grail of how to stimulate domestic consumption.

Furthermore, the label of a "world power" comes with international responsibilities, such as cutting carbon emissions, playing more active roles in resolving issues in the Middle East and Africa, fighting terrorism, helping rescue the ailing European Union economy and maintaining an amiable atmosphere in the neighborhood. These are things that create more problems than solutions. With all these, and many more, issues on the plate, it is not surprising that the debate of which country is really the largest economy in the world does not and cannot occupy the minds of the Chinese people.

The author Michele Geraci is head of China Economic Policy Program at Nottingham University Business School, China, and at the Global Policy Institute, London.