GDP · 2025
140.1879NBS ↗
trillion yuan · current prices
Indicators · Economy
China GDP
Start with China’s 2025 economy, then follow the evidence through real growth, four China–US GDP rulers, accounting methods, sector structure and the limits of GDP.
Real growth
5.0%
constant prices
GDP per capita
99,665
yuan per person
01
Start with three domestic measures
Level, growth and per-capita output answer different questions
The 2025 GDP level records value added at current prices and answers “how large is the economy?” The 5.0% real-growth rate uses constant prices and answers “how much did output rise after removing price changes?” GDP per capita divides output by population and answers “how much output corresponds to the average person?” The three belong together, but one cannot be reverse-engineered from another.
This distinction matters. Current-price GDP can rise faster than real output when prices increase, while population change can make per-capita GDP move differently from the total. The international comparison below follows the same rule: name the ruler before interpreting the number.
Historical trend
China’s real GDP growth since 1990
Annual percentage growth at constant prices.
Source: World Bank ↗ · WDI NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG · annual %chinainfigures.com
International comparison
GDP per capita at purchasing power parity
Same WDI definition and latest common year across selected economies. An international dollar is a PPP comparison unit, not a tradable currency.
Source: World Bank ↗ · WDI NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CDchinainfigures.com
Why start with real growth? The level shows size; real growth shows how output changed after removing price movements.
China’s economy kept expanding while its long-run growth rate moderated as the base became larger. Slower growth is not a falling level.
Real annual growth cannot be inferred by subtracting current-price yuan levels, and it is not the same as a single-quarter year-on-year rate.
02
China–US comparison
Which economy is larger depends on the question
“US GDP is about one and a half times China’s” and “China has larger GDP at PPP” are not contradictory. Current-dollar GDP converts local-currency GDP at market exchange rates and is useful for international market size and payment context. PPP adjusts cross-country price levels. Constant-price PPP additionally removes price change over time, while per-capita PPP divides the total by population.
The first step is not choosing the most favorable number. It is stating the question: market-exchange-rate scale, domestic real economic volume, or output per person?
2024GDP at current market exchange rates
China18.73
United States28.75
trillion current US dollars
The United States is about 1.54× China
Best for: How large is the economy when converted at market exchange rates?
Not for: Domestic purchasing power or real growth by itself.
2024GDP at current purchasing power parity
China38.19
United States29.18
trillion current international dollars
China is about 1.31× the United States
Best for: How large is current-price output after adjusting for cross-country price levels?
Not for: International payment capacity or a pure real-volume trend.
2024Real GDP at constant 2021 purchasing power parity
China33.60
United States25.74
trillion constant 2021 international dollars
China is about 1.31× the United States
Best for: How does real economic volume compare on a fixed PPP price basis?
Not for: A current exchangeable dollar amount or current-price market value.
2025GDP per capita at purchasing power parity
China29,333
United States90,027
current international dollars per person
The United States is about 3.07× China
Best for: How much PPP-adjusted output corresponds to the average person?
Not for: Median income, household wealth, inequality or quality of life.
One metric, two economies
China and the United States on four GDP rulers
Each panel uses its own unit and scale: blue for China and red for the United States. Compare the two bars within a panel only; values across panels cannot be added or compared by bar length across units.
Source: World Bank WDI DataBank ↗ · World Bank WDI ↗ · World Bank ICP · PPP method ↗ · each ruler uses its own latest common year; PPP is not a market exchange ratechinainfigures.com
Exact values
Values and leader relationships across four GDP rulers
Compare only within the same row, year and unit; values across different rulers cannot be added.
| Ruler | Year | China | United States | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| GDP at current market exchange rates | 2024 | 18.73 trillion current US dollars | 28.75 trillion current US dollars | The United States is about 1.54× China |
| GDP at current purchasing power parity | 2024 | 38.19 trillion current international dollars | 29.18 trillion current international dollars | China is about 1.31× the United States |
| Real GDP at constant 2021 purchasing power parity | 2024 | 33.60 trillion constant 2021 international dollars | 25.74 trillion constant 2021 international dollars | China is about 1.31× the United States |
| GDP per capita at purchasing power parity | 2025 | 29,333 current international dollars per person | 90,027 current international dollars per person | The United States is about 3.07× China |
Why can the same China–US comparison reverse? Market exchange rates, PPP, fixed prices and population change the question being asked.
At current market exchange rates in 2024, the United States was about 1.54× China. On current and constant-price PPP measures, China was about 1.31× and 1.31× the United States.
An international dollar is not a tradable currency or a fixed “true exchange rate”, and larger aggregate PPP GDP does not imply higher income per person.
Why exchange rates matter
Growth in local-currency GDP does not imply the same growth in dollar GDP
Current-dollar GDP can be thought of as local-currency current-price GDP divided by the local-currency-per-dollar exchange rate. Output, domestic prices and exchange rates all matter. Depreciation lowers the converted dollar value; appreciation raises it.
That does not make current-dollar GDP meaningless. It is useful for international market scale, imports and external-finance context. It simply does not by itself answer how much an economy can produce and purchase domestically. Exchange rates explain only part of the gap.
China current-price GDP in yuan÷average yuan per US dollar=GDP in current US dollars
03
Accounting methods
Production, income and expenditure are three views of the same activity
China and the United States do not each use one incompatible GDP algorithm. China’s NBS describes production, income and expenditure approaches and the three-way equivalence principle. The US BEA also measures expenditure, income and value added by industry. Data timing and statistical discrepancies create practical differences, but the approaches observe the same final production.
Production approach
Add value added across production stages. Value added equals output minus intermediate inputs, avoiding repeated counting of the same materials.
Income approach
Add compensation, operating surplus, depreciation and net production taxes generated by production. It is not simply the sum of personal bank-account income.
Expenditure approach
Record final consumption, investment, government spending and net exports. This does not mean spending alone creates value; it records where produced output is finally used.
Farm sells wheat120yuan value added
+Flour mill30150 − 120
+Bakery50200 − 150
=Production GDP200yuan
This example assumes the farm buys no intermediate inputs, so all 120 yuan is value added. Treating an unexplained 100 yuan as the farmer’s cost while omitting the production of that input would undercount GDP. The income approach allocates the same 200 yuan to labor income, surplus, depreciation and net taxes; the expenditure approach records the final bread purchase.
04
Manufacturing and total GDP
Why larger manufacturing does not automatically mean larger GDP
GDP covers agriculture, mining, manufacturing, utilities and construction, but also transport, retail, software, finance, health, education, housing, professional and government services. Manufacturing reveals an important production base, but it cannot replace total value added. To avoid double counting, the chart separates manufacturing from the rest of industry and construction.
Comparable broad-sector structure · 2021
Where broad value added comes from in China and the United States
Both bars close to 100%. The roughly 5.2-point US residual is shown separately as product taxes and statistical residual rather than incorrectly assigned to services.
Source: World Bank DataBank · sector structure ↗ · World Bank WDI ↗ · Agriculture, broad industry and services are official DataBank display values rounded to one decimal. Manufacturing uses the registered WDI series at full precision. Derived segments preserve full calculation precision and are rounded only in the interface.chinainfigures.com
| Economy | Agriculture, forestry and fishing | Manufacturing | Other industry and construction | Services | Product taxes and statistical residual |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| China | 7.1% | 26.6% | 11.5% | 54.8% | 0.0% |
| United States | 0.9% | 10.5% | 7.1% | 76.3% | 5.2% |
Why can China have a larger manufacturing sector while the United States still has larger current-dollar GDP? Manufacturing is only one part of total value added.
In 2021 manufacturing was about 26.6% of GDP in China and 10.5% in the United States. Services were about 76.3% in the United States versus 54.8% in China.
Sector shares show where broad value added comes from. They do not by themselves measure absolute output, productivity, service quality, welfare or wartime capacity.
Why housing enters GDP
Owner-occupied homes provide services even without a cash rent payment
Owner-occupied homes provide housing services even without a cash rent payment. National accounts impute a rental value to avoid treating identical housing services differently only because ownership differs.
China changed urban owner-occupied housing services from a cost method to a rental method in the 2023 GDP revision, improving international comparability.
Imputed housing services are not house prices, property-market value, real-estate investment or a bubble measure.
Rented homecash rent→Owner-occupied homeimputed rental service
Ownership alone should not make identical housing services appear in GDP in one case and disappear in another.
05
From China–US to major economies
Three long-run rulers for the same group of economies
The four ruler cards answer the latest-common-year question. The three charts below extend the same concepts to China, the United States, the EU, Japan, the UK and India. Market exchange rates, current PPP and constant-price PPP retain distinct meanings, so differences across charts are not one kind of growth.
Exchange-rate and current-price view
Nominal GDP across major economies
Why look: compare scale at market exchange rates. Finding: exchange rates and domestic prices change rankings and gaps. Boundary: this is not domestic purchasing power or pure real growth.
Source: World Bank WDI DataBank ↗ · Official World Bank WDI observations for 2000 and 2016–2024 only. Lines connect published benchmark points; no interpolation or IMF forecast is included. The EU is the official World Bank aggregate and the UK is shown separately.chinainfigures.com
Purchasing power parity · current prices
GDP at purchasing power parity across major economies
Why look: adjust for cross-economy price levels. Finding: lower-price economies such as China and India appear larger relative to current-dollar GDP. Boundary: this is not international payment capacity or a fixed-price real-growth measure.
Source: World Bank WDI DataBank ↗ · World Bank ICP · PPP method ↗ · Official World Bank WDI observations for 2000 and 2016–2024 only. Lines connect published benchmark points; no interpolation or IMF forecast is included. The EU is the official World Bank aggregate and the UK is shown separately.chinainfigures.com
Real economic volume
Real PPP GDP across major economies
Why look: compare real volume on a fixed PPP price basis. Finding: removing price change makes long-run output paths clearer. Boundary: this is not a current exchangeable dollar amount or median income.
Source: World Bank WDI DataBank ↗ · World Bank ICP · PPP method ↗ · Official World Bank WDI observations for 2000 and 2016–2024 only. Lines connect published benchmark points; no interpolation or IMF forecast is included. The EU is the official World Bank aggregate and the UK is shown separately.chinainfigures.com
06
Back to China in 2025
Domestic sector structure and quarterly growth complete the level story
The international comparison chooses the ruler. China’s domestic sector and quarterly data show where 2025 value added came from and how growth changed through the year. They remain separate from the 2021 WDI broad-sector comparison because the year and classification system differ.
China 2025 industry structure
Services accounted for 57.7% of GDP
Question: how was China’s 2025 value added distributed across the three domestic sectors? Finding: the tertiary sector had the largest share. Boundary: China’s three-sector classification is not identical to the WDI broad-sector structure.
Source: NBS ↗ · China domestic three-sector classification, 2025chinainfigures.com
China 2025 quarterly growth
Year-on-year real GDP growth slowed through 2025
Question: how did real growth change through the year? Finding: single-quarter year-on-year growth slowed from 5.4% in Q1 to 4.5% in Q4. Boundary: this is neither cumulative annual growth nor current-price GDP growth.
Source: NBS ↗ · single-quarter year-on-year · constant priceschinainfigures.com
07
The limits of GDP
GDP is a production measure, not a complete portrait of a country
GDP is useful for measuring value added, real output change, sector composition and economic scale under a stated exchange-rate or PPP basis. It should not be asked to answer income and wealth distribution, quality of life, health or education efficiency, environmental costs, asset bubbles, industrial mobilization, military capability or overall national power on its own.
GDP can answer
- How much value added was produced
- How real output changed after price adjustment
- How value added is distributed by sector and final use
- How scale compares under a stated exchange-rate or PPP basis
GDP cannot answer alone
- Median income, distribution or wealth
- Public-service quality or efficiency
- Environmental costs or sustainability
- Asset bubbles, military capacity or overall national power
The United States can have larger current-dollar GDP, China a higher manufacturing share and larger aggregate PPP GDP, and the United States higher per-capita PPP GDP—all at the same time, because the measures answer different questions.
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Revision and update timeline
China-US GDP ruler and broad-sector comparison prepared
Registered method sources, broad-sector WDI snapshots and derived lineages for four GDP rulers, a five-part China-US sector structure and narrative methodology sections.
Related sources: World Bank ↗ · National Bureau of Statistics of China ↗ · U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis ↗ · National Bureau of Statistics of China ↗ · U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis ↗ · World Bank International Comparison Program ↗
Sources and definitions registered; automated checks passed
Three major-economy GDP trend comparisons added to the existing GDP page
Added current-US-dollar GDP, current-PPP GDP and constant-2021-PPP GDP benchmark-year trends for China, the United States, the European Union, Japan, the United Kingdom and India.
Related sources: World Bank ↗
Sources and definitions registered; automated checks passed
Data downloads and revision timeline added
Added page-level formal-data CSV files, chart-level CSV/PNG/SVG exports and a bilingual revision timeline to all indicator pages.
Sources and definitions registered; automated checks passed
Indicator page published
Published the official 2025 GDP level, real growth and industry structure with a separate WDI comparison.
Related sources: National Bureau of Statistics of China ↗
Sources and definitions registered; automated checks passed