China's Economy Has Grown from the Sixth to the Fourth Largest in the World  China Has Leapfrogged into a Middle-income Country.

China's national economy has undergone rapid, long-lasting and stable growth since the 16th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in November 2002, pushing it from the sixth largest economy in the world to the fourth largest and making it a middle-income country in terms of per-capita gross national income, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

In its recently released "Retrospective Reports on the Economic and Social Development from the 16th CPC National Congress to 17th CPC National Congress," the bureau said the country's development in the past five years has laid a solid groundwork for the realization of the objective of the third step of the three-step strategy for China's national economic and social development -- to reach the level of a medium developed country by the mid-21st century.

The four years since 2003 have been one of the periods of rapid and long-lasting economic growth since China adopted the policy of reform and opening up in the late 1970s.Gross domestic product (GDP) grew 10.4 percent annually on average from 2003 to 2006, 5.5 percentage points higher than the world average in the same period (4.9 percent), and 0.7 percentage points higher than China's average annual GDP growth since the late 1970s (9.7 percent). While maintaining sustained, rapid economic growth, China's economic performance has been highly stable. The Chinese economy has grown rapidly with insignificant fluctuations through the years.

From 2003 to 2006, the gap between the highest and the lowest GDP annual growth rates was only 1.1 percent, a testament to China's quick and constant economic growth. Within four years, China moved up two spots from the sixth largest economy in the world to the fourth largest in the global GDP ranking. Its GDP rose from $12.03 trillion in 2002 to $21.09 trillion in 2006, surpassing the benchmark of $20 trillion with an average annual increase of $2.26 trillion. This growth enabled China to exceed France and Britain in 2005 to become the world's fourth largest economy. In 2006, while remaining in fourth place, China narrowed its gap with the top three countries -- the United States, Japan and Germany. China's GDP accounted for 20 percent, 60.6 percent and 91.3 percent of the GDP of the United States, Japan and Germany, respectively, in 2006, compared to 13.9 percent, 37 percent and 71.8 percent, respectively, in 2002. China's share of the world's total GDP is also on the rise, increasing from 4.4 percent in 2002 to 5.5 percent in 2006. China has joined the ranks of middle-income countries as its per-capita gross national income nearly doubled. The index first passed the benchmark of $1,000 in 2002 to reach $1,100.

After four short years, it surpassed $2,000 to hit $2,010 in 2006. As a result, its world ranking went up from 132nd place in 2002 to 129th place in 2006. According to the standards of the World Bank, China has turned itself from a low-income country to a middle-income country. The progress marks a firm step taken in the course of building China into a well-off society in an all-around way.