Search China Travel News:

China is likely to declare itself the world's fourth largest economy next week, having leapfrogged Italy, France and Britain, helped by a likely huge revision of its gross domestic product figures.

Economists say the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), which is due to release part of the results of its first national economic census on Dec. 20, is likely to put a much bigger figure on the size of China's services sector.

The South China Morning Post, citing unnamed economists, reported on Tuesday that the agency would probably revise GDP by as much as $300 billion, or about 20 percent of 2004 output.

A revision of that magnitude could catapult China from the world's seventh-largest economy into fourth spot, now occupied by Britain.

Jim O'Neill, chief global economist at Goldman Sachs in London, said China could attain that status even without such a big revision based on growth rates and currency changes in 2005.

Not only has China grown far more quickly than Italy, France and Britain this year, but the yuan has risen about 2.5 percent against the dollar, further boosting its output when measured in dollars. The euro and sterling, by contrast, have fallen.

"China could squeak in ahead of Britain even without a revision," O'Neill said. "It just goes to show how much it's contributing to the world economy."

Economists said an upward revision of 20 percent, as reported by the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post, would be in line with their own estimates -- or could even be too modest.

Chen Xingdong, chief China economist for BNP Paribas Peregrine in Beijing, said he would not be surprised if the NBS revised up its estimate of China's GDP, which totalled $1.65 trillion in 2004, by 15 percent to 20 percent.

China's number-crunchers have failed to capture the boom in small and medium-sized industrial enterprises, Chen said.

"We always argue that it has been largely underestimated for a long, long time," he said. "Even a number like 15 percent is not that large for us."