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China’s Economy Relative to the U.S.
China’s GDP as a share of U.S. GDP, at market exchange rates and at purchasing power parity, %
Plays the chart through its history. Pauses are where the data set a record or moved most.
At purchasing power parity · Continuation · the recent trend, flattening · 3 years
At market exchange rates · Continuation · the recent trend, flattening · 3 years
Dashed: the projection from the latest reading. Shaded: the range about two in three outcomes land in. A projection, not a promise.
When a line passes parity, China’s economy is the larger of the two on that measure.
The size of China’s economy relative to America’s on two measures. The two measures tell different stories: adjusting for local prices narrows the gap far more than market exchange rates do.
What this chart reads
- China GDP as % of US (PPP)as “At purchasing power parity”latest 2025-12-31
- China GDP as % of US (nominal)as “At market exchange rates”latest 2025-12-31
Sources
China GDP as % of US (PPP). Source: World Bank publishes the underlying GDP series. Palanor pulls World Bank Open Data through its API monthly under a CC BY 4.0 license and computes the ratio.
China GDP as % of US (nominal). Source: World Bank publishes the underlying nominal GDP series for both countries. Palanor pulls World Bank Open Data through its API monthly under a CC BY 4.0 license.
Charts are drawn from Palanor's signal library and recomputed from source data on every view. Transformations (changes, indexing, year-on-year rates) are Palanor's.