Peak China? The titan of industry is held back by its own internal contradictions

Proclamations about the inevitability of China's dominance of global economics - the so-called Chinese century - were made long before Donald Trump tried to stymie its trade with the US.

- George Magnus

Proclamations about the inevitability of China's dominance of global economics - the so-called Chinese century - were made long before Donald Trump tried to stymie its trade with the US. Common concerns about coercive politics and human rights aside, some notions of China as an unstoppable economic, technological and military behemoth sit alongside others focused more on an increasingly sclerotic, over-centralised political economy that depends on wasteful economic stimulus, and features poor governance and institutions.

The fusion of these notions suggests that we may already have reached "peak China".

At the time of the 2008 financial crisis, China's official, and probably exaggerated, GDP was about $14tn (£10.4tn), or about a third of that of the US. By 2021, it had risen to three-quarters of America's $23.7tn, and there was widespread talk about in which year of the 2020s China would overtake the US.

By 2024, however, China's $18tn economy had fallen back to just over 62% of the almost $30tn of the US. In GDP per head terms, China is still no more than 20% of the US.