China could overtake the United States by 2025 to become the world's largest economy, a survey has predicted.

The PricewaterhouseCoopers report, entitled 'The World in 2050: Beyond the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China)', also shows that the Chinese economy is anticipated to grow to about 130 per cent of that of the US by 2050.

The projections also indicate that India could grow to almost 90 per cent of the size of the US by 2050, while Brazil seems likely to overtake Japan by 2050 to move into fourth place.

Russia, Mexico and Indonesia all have the potential to have economies larger than those of Germany or the UK by the middle of this century.

But the fastest mover could be Vietnam, with a potential growth rate of almost 10 per cent per annum in real dollar terms that could push it up to around 70 per cent of the size of the UK economy by 2050.

John Hawksworth, head of macroeconomics at PricewaterhouseCoopers, said: "The global centre of economic gravity is already shifting to China, India and other large emerging economies and our analysis suggests that this process has a lot further to run.

"Our latest projections suggest that China could overtake the US in around 2025 to become the world's largest economy."

According to the report, Nigeria has the long-term potential to overtake South Africa to be the largest African economy by 2050.

PricewaterhouseCoopers also noted that Egypt, the Philippines and Bangladesh all have high growth potential.

The article China to be world's largest economy in 2025 originally appeared on 999 Today