China to overtake US by 2018 - PwC

China will overtake the US as the world's largest economy by 2018 as the global financial crisis propels the shift in economic power to emerging countries, says PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The firm's analysis found the E7 emerging economies, comprising China, India, Brazil, Russia, Mexico, Indonesia and Turkey are likely to surpass the G7 economies before 2020. PwC chief economist John Hawksworth says: "In many ways, the renewed dominance by 2050 of China and India, with their much larger populations, is a return to the historical norm prior to the Industrial Revolution of the late 18th and 19th centuries that caused a shift in global economic power from Asia to Western Europe and the US. "This temporary shift in power is now going into reverse." One of the key drive...