World Oil Outlook - Opec

By 2035, the Chinese economy will be larger than any other country and even
larger than entire regions within the OECD (Figure 1.6). India, which in 2010 accounted
for 5% of global GDP, rises to 11% by 2035 and will have a larger economy
than the whole OECD Asia Oceania region. Within ten years, India is expected to be
growing faster than China (Box 1.3). The share of developing Asian countries in the
world’s economic activity rises in the Reference Case from 26% in 2010 to 43% by
2035.
As shown in Figure 1.7, by 2035, OECD regions will remain in the dominant
position in terms of GDP per capita. In today’s prices, OECD America will approach
$50,000 per capita, while China’s growing economy sees per capita income approach
that of Russia at $30,000, above current average levels for OECD Europe. Other Asia
still averages just $8,000 per capita by 2035. In the Reference Case, Africa (which,
in the WOO’s nomenclature, is combined with non-OPEC Middle East countries)
remains the poorest region with GDP per capita of just $3,400.
Box 1.3
India to overtake China in economic growth
Over the period 1990–2011, the Chinese economy grew at an average rate of
10.2% p.a., while India’s GDP grew at an average rate of 6.7% p.a. What these
averages disguise, however, is that the difference in growth rate has become less in
recent years, certainly compared to the 1990s when Indian growth rates were at
least 5% below those of China for half of the decade.
A key issue to note is the markedly different demographic trends between the two
countries. India’s total population is expected to increase at an average rate of 1%
p.a. over the years 2010–2035, thereby increasing by more than 350 million people,
in contrast to China’s net increase of just 40 million over this period. What
is particularly relevant for the country’s economic potential, however, is not just
aggregate population growth, but also changes in the age structure, which in turn
have impacts on the size of the working age population. The key difference between
the two countries has been in respect to crude birth rates. While they were similar
in the early 1950s, at just over 40 births per 1,000, the rate in China fell to just over
half the rate of India by the beginning of the 21st century.
While the UN expects this gap to gradually narrow over this century, for the purposes
of projections to 2035, the variances in birth rates translate directly into the
relative share of age groups in total populations in the Reference Case. Figure 1
demonstrates how the share of the working age population in China has been rising
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