Chinese economy shows resilience, innovative potential despite concerns over currency, growth

BEIJING - Recent depreciation of China's currency and its slowing growth pace after years of high-speed development have given rise to questions into the health of the world's second largest economy.

However, renowned think tanks have revealed great resilience and strong potential for China's economy to maintain a stable and healthier development.

Nicholas Lardy, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said he believed the service sector is now the driver of growth in sharing his reading of the economic data in China.

"The fact that industrial growth has slowed down quite a bit does not mean, as it would have meant 10 years ago, that the economy is falling off a cliff," he said.

By over stressing industrial performance, people "are going off in the wrong direction, misinterpreting what's actually happening" in China, he said.

China's march to No 1 continues, said a report by the Times. In 2014, China's total GDP overtook the US' when measured by purchasing power parity. Using this metric, China accounted for 16.32 percent of world GDP in 2014, eclipsing the US' 16.14 percent, noted the US weekly.

More impressive than the size of China's economy is the speed with which it has grown, it said.

Back in 2000, Chinese imports and exports accounted for 3 percent of all global goods traded. By 2014, that figure had jumped to more than 10 percent.

Times credited the Chinese leadership in building an awesome $3.7 trillion foreign exchange reserves, which is by far the world's biggest rainy day fund.

This "money buffer" has played an important part in giving the Chinese economy a staying power despite recent turmoil, it said.