Although reports emerged last year claiming that China had overtaken the U.S. as the world's largest economy, the former's National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) presented a different view at a press conference on Tuesday.
The 2014 announcement was based on projections presented in a study conducted by the International Comparison Program (ICP). The ICP used the measurement of purchasing power parity (PPP), which examines GDP in relation to the prices of the same goods between countries, and looks at the purchasing power of a currency instead of market exchange rates.
According to bureau director Ma Jiantang, the NBS was a participant in the ICP's study. Ma told reporters that "we need to be cautious in applying the study results," as "the PPP methodology might have underestimated actual price levels in China and overestimated China's GDP."
The organization's head concluded that the results are not conclusive for the Chinese government at the time of the press conference.
Additionally, data released by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), also in 2014, led to the same conclusion as that reached by the ICP.
In December, Forbes' Tim Worstall expressed a distinct lack of both surprise and concern, explaining to readers:
". . . people have been announcing that it's about to happen for months. . . . A pretty simple prediction it was too. As one banker turned university administrator said when he went off to work in China, China's been the world's largest economy for 19 of the past 20 centuries."
The bureau's announcement was accompanied by statistical data that shows that the Chinese economy grew at its slowest rate in 24 years over the course of last year.