OECD expert says global growth now more reliant on China

PARIS -- The world is now more relying on China for growth as China is expected to account for over one-third of global gross domestic product growth next year, Margit Molnar, head of the China Desk of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, said on Thursday.

"From the point of view of securing a certain level of growth at the global level, it is good to know which countries are the engines of global growth," Molnar said. "It appears that once again, China is driving the global economy out of the trough."

"In the past years China's contribution to global growth was 28-29 percent, the current one-third is a significant increase. The world is now more relying on China for growth," she told Xinhua.

The chief China economist of the Paris-based organization also noted that the 2021 growth rates forecast by the OECD are "unusually high" because all those economies have a very low base in 2021 as they were all hit by the pandemic to different degrees.

"But not all have already or are projected to recover by next year. China is the only major economy that has recovered already to pre-pandemic output levels, thus its 8 percent growth rate will look high due to the low base this year," she said.

"In contrast, the other economies' growth rates will not be high next year as they are not projected to recover to pre-COVID-19 output levels even next year. Their recovery is forecasted to be more protracted. So, China will stand out with its robust growth throughout our forecast horizon," she said.

"In that sense, China will likely remain a greater contributor to global growth than it was in the couple of years prior to the pandemic," she said.

The OECD Economic Outlook released on Tuesday projected that vaccination campaigns, health policies and government financial support will lift the world economy by 4.2 percent in 2021 after a fall of 4.2 percent this year.

The report projected that China will register a 1.8 percent growth in 2020, the only major economy to record a positive performance. The growth will jump to 8 percent in 2021 before slowing to 4.9 percent a year after.

The OECD report noted that "the contribution of Europe and North America to global growth will remain smaller than their weight in the world economy."

The US GDP will grow by 3.2 percent in 2021 and 3.5 percent in 2022 after seeing a 3.7 percent contraction in this year, whereas the eurozone's will shrink 7.5 percent in 2020, before growing by 3.6 percent and 3.3 percent in the next two years, the report said.