The latest quarterly GDP growth data for China made headlines again, for being the lowest since the financial crisis of 2008. While the growth rate has a statistical significance in this respect, it was not unexpected. Indeed, at 6.9%, the Chinese GDP growth in the last quarter might have marginally exceeded some expectations.

Looking ahead, the world and China are bracing for even slower growth of the Chinese economy. The latest World Economic Outlook of the IMF projects a marginal upturn in global growth in 2016, at 3.6%, compared with 3.1% for 2015. China, however, is likely to experience a decline, with its GDP growth projected to reduce from 6.8% in 2015 to 6.3% in 2016.

If these projections hold, it is going to be one of the rare occasions in recent times, when a better growth in world output will not be accompanied by a similar growth in the Chinese economy.

Though it is still early days, some analysts have begun speculating whether the next couple of years might see firming of a trend where China is no more a key ‘engine’ for global growth. The hypothesis is gaining currency among analysts following every little strain and crack in the Chinese economy for demonstrating its brittle character. It might, however, be rather premature to write off China and its enormous impact on the global economy.

The IMF’s data points to emerging and developing Asia continuing to remain the fastest-growing regional group in the world in both 2015 and 2016. India is expected to be the fastest-growing major economy in the group by recording GDP growth of more than 7%. Barring small economies like Bhutan, Laos, Myanmar and Papua New Guinea, which are expected to grow faster than India, the major economies projected to grow 6-7% are China, Bangladesh, the Philippines and Vietnam. China’s sheer economic size—more than $10 trillion ($17 trillion plus, in PPP terms)—makes even a 6% GDP growth add more than half a trillion each year to the global economy. Measured in PPP terms, the contribution would be even higher—something that not even the US economy can expect to add to the world output in the foreseeable future.

At this stage, therefore, questions on China’s ability to contribute to the world economy remain merely conjectures. The country will continue to remain a major contributor to global economic activity for decades to come. The point, though, is whether other economies will come up to match China’s significance in the world economy. This is where India has become the cynosure of many eyes as the economy that can possibly rival China by occupying as much share in global output. India might well be capable of living up to global expectations of sustained high growth. However, that does not mean China becoming insignificant in the global economic calculus.

One of the most striking aspects of China’s economic success during the last three decades has been its ascent up the ranks in spite of being a developing economy. Indeed, as the world’s second-largest economy (the largest by some yardsticks), China is ahead of all other developed economies of the world, except the US. While India and Brazil—two other developing countries—have also broken into the big league of the world’s largest economies, they are still way behind China’s economic size and influence on the world economy. By being a developed economy, China remains short of the social and human development standards of the advanced OECD countries. However, as a developing economy, it also continues to have unutilised resources for employing in production over a period in time. This is not possible for advanced economies as they hardly have unutilised resources and have to depend entirely on technology and innovation-based productivity gains for recording significant increases in economic growth.

The short point is China, much like India, Brazil and several other developing countries/emerging markets, still has aces up its sleeve. From now on, however, it will find the latter countries a bigger source of economic competition, compared with advanced economies. Indeed, for other emerging markets like India, more of the targeted macroeconomic yardsticks are going to be benchmarked to those of China, rather than advanced economies.

China is at a unique position in its economic history, where it is midway in transitioning from a developing to a developed economy. Like the former, it still has abundant labour for employing in a variety of activities. Like the latter, however, it has to take note of the relative appreciation that has taken place in its labour costs vis-a-vis other labour-surplus economies. Similarly, while still encouraging foreign investors to look at it closely, it has not spared any efforts to invest overseas—hallmarks typical of capital-importing developing countries and capital-exporting developed nations, respectively. This unique dichotomy is likely to maintain it as one of the world’s most powerful economic influences for several more years.

The author is senior research fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. Views are personal

isasap@nus.edu.sg