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China argues it’s not really world’s largest economy

By China News on January 25, 2015 • ( 5 )

Employees from the local Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau collect samples at an iron ore dump site of Rizhao Port in Rizhao, Shandong province.

China‘s statistics agency said Tuesday that the International Monetary Fund is wrong in saying China has topped the U.S. as the largest economy in the world.

According to the latest IMF figures based on purchasing power parity, China produced $17.6 trillion in goods and services in 2014, surpassing the U.S.’s $17.4 trillion.

But China’s National Bureau of Statistics chief Ma Jiantang said the numbers may have “underestimated China’s price levels and overestimated China’s gross domestic product.”

Ma also said that “the total volume of our economy is expanding, but the per-capita level remains low.”

Ma said China is still a developing country, with about 200 million people in poverty.

China – which earlier Tuesday had posted 7.4% growth for 2014, the slowest in 24 years – has long rebuffed efforts to label it a “developed economy,” a distinction which could have effects on some international treaties with different rules for rich and poor nations.