China overtakes the U.S. as the world's largest economy in terms of purchasing power

China overtakes the U.S. as the world&#039;s largest economy in terms of purchasing power

(Image credit: ChinaFotoPress/Getty Images)

last updated 8 January 2015

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) reports that, when calculated according to purchasing power, China now boasts the world's largest economy.

The calculation method is key here, because in raw numbers, the United States' GDP ($16.8 trillion in 2013) is still about $7 trillion ahead of China's ($9.2 trillion in 2013). But because of significant cost of living differences between the two countries, those figures don't provide a completely accurate picture. That's where purchasing power comparisons come in, and where China's growth is evident: By 2015, the U.S. will account for 16.28 percent of the world's purchasing power adjusted for GDP. China will be responsible for 16.48 percent.

China's growth is representative of a larger trend of "emerging economies" commandeering an ever-larger share of the world economy while "advanced economies" become less prominent.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.