Asia New Vision Forum: China Expected to Be World’s Biggest Economy by 2050, Thornton Says

07 Oct 2024

China is expected to replace the U.S. to become the world’s largest economy by 2050 with a GDP of more than $40 trillion, John Thornton, chairman of Redbird Capital Partners and former co-president of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., told the Asia New Vision Forum 2024 Thursday.

“The 10 leading economies in the world in the year 2050 will be, and I’m doing this in order: China, the United States, India, Indonesia, Germany, Japan, the U.K., Brazil, South Korea, and France,” Thornton said at the international business leadership conference in Singapore, which was organized by Caixin.

China’s GDP will likely amount to $42 trillion in 2050, more than double last year’s figure, while the U.S. is expected to see its economic output expand to $38 trillion, according to Thornton, who noted that his estimates couldn’t be “precise” and didn’t specify the exact year when China is expected to surpass the U.S. The combined GDP of the eight other countries will amount to around $60 trillion in 2050, with India accounting for one-third of the total, he said.

With China’s rise to the No. 1 spot, the relationship between the world’s two largest economies will continue to be the reference point for all others in the world and the “essential global geopolitical dynamic will remain the same as it is today,” said Thornton, a co-chair of the Asia New Vision Forum.

A large number of other countries that have real standing “will assert themselves to varying degrees and in a variety of ways to ensure they are not put in a position where they are forced to choose between the U.S. and China,” he said.

“These countries, in the aggregate, will require the U.S. and China to have at least, or at a minimum, a functional relationship with an understanding of where each stands in relation to the other. They will insist that the U.S.-China relationship be a source of global stability,” he said.

Thornton also highlighted the growing influence of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a bloc of 10 countries with a combined population of more than 600 million that aims to promote economic integration among its members.

ASEAN will play a greater role in the global economic landscape, according to Thornton, who estimated the combined GDP of the bloc would exceed $12 trillion in 2050, more than three times the $3.6 trillion achieved in 2022. That means if ASEAN were a country, it would replace Indonesia as the world’s fourth-largest economy, with an output twice that of Germany, Thornton said.

“It will become increasingly clear that ASEAN will be a model for how multiple countries with different interests can engage and make progress peacefully and prosperously,” he said.