'Indian economy cannot surpass China's GDP'

India cannot surpass China's GDP despite the "potential" to become a big power, a state-run Chinese daily said today, underlining that "unrealistic" praise and forecasts for India are just giving an "illusory picture".

The higher projections of India's economic growth rate in comparison to China's slowing down economy has riled the Chinese official media which argues that India is far away in catching up with China's GDP.

"It is inescapably clear that India won't easily outgrow China as predicted by the West. From a macro perspective, China's GDP in 2015 was nearly USD 10.42 trillion, which is around 5 times as much as India's USD 2.18 trillion," an article in the Global Times said.

The daily said that it is foreseeable that China's future economic growth rate may slow down slightly, but the possibility of zero and negative growth is "almost nonexistent".

"As a result, there is no possibility of India surpassing China," the article said, adding that "authors in the West never tire of choosing India to compare with China. They seem to consider that India could replace China in the near future."

"It must be admitted that India is a potential big power. But unrealistic praise and forecasts for India are just painting an illusory picture for it," the article said.

It said that though international agencies such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and IMF try to "trumpet" India's advantages, India is not yet a dominant player on the international economic arena, and it has many ingrained problems."

Pointing that India's electric power, urban water supply, public transport and other infrastructure construction are lagging behind, it said the gap between India and China has not narrowed but expanded after so many years of development.

"Most of India's indicators of the level of social development today, such as life expectancy at birth, adult literacy rate, power consumption, proportion of rural population and proportion of poverty, still remain at the level of China's at the end of 20th century," it said.

India's last year GDP grew at 7.2 per cent while China's decelerated to 6.9 per cent slipping below seven per cent for the first time in a  quarter century.

The government fixed this year's target at 6.5 to seven per cent.

In its forecast, the IMF predicted Chinese economy to further decelerate to 6.3 per cent in 2016 and 6 per cent for 2017, whereas for India, it has projected 7.3 per cent GDP in 2015-16 and 7.5 per cent in 2016-17.