Jim O'Neill, Columnist

China's Big Year Ahead

While many experts remain pessimistic about China's economy, there are three good reasons to be bullish.

January 7, 2015 at 11:00 PM UTC

Jim O'Neill worked for Goldman Sachs Group Inc. from 1995 until 2013, serving most recently as chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, and as the firm's chief economist from 2001 to 2011. Before joining Goldman Sachs, he was head of global research at Swiss Bank Corp. O'Neill is the creator of the BRIC acronym, which was derived from his thesis that Brazil, Russia, India and China would dominate growth in emerging markets. He is a member of the boards of the Brussels-based policy-research centers Itinera Institute and Bruegel. He earned a degree in economics from Sheffield University in 1978 and a doctorate from the University of Surrey in 1982. He lives in London.

Expecting more Chinese shoppers.
Photographer: Wang Zhao/AFP/Getty Images

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Halfway through a decade in which China set out to rebalance its economy, it is poised to drastically enlarge its role in the world. Let me explain why.

Back at the start of the decade, I made certain assumptions about how the so-called BRIC economies -- Brazil, Russia, India and China -- would perform in the 10 years ahead. Five years on, China is the only one of the four to have either met or possibly slightly surpassed my expectations. Assuming that China's soon-to-be-published fourth-quarter gross domestic product number will come in at or close to 7.3 percent, as many experts assume, then from 2011 to 2014, China will have averaged real GDP growth of just less than 8 percent. I had assumed it would be 7.5 percent for the full decade (as did Chinese leaders back in 2011), and China could achieve this if its economy continues to grow by 7 percent for the next five years.