The U.S. economy is gradually recovering from the epidemic. Economic analysts predict that the trend that U.S. growth has been lagging behind China for decades is expected to reverse this year.

With the accelerated pace of vaccination in the United States and Washington’s $1.9 trillion bailout plan, the United States’ economic growth forecast is now more optimistic than it was a few months ago.

Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley believe that the United States is expected to achieve 6.9% or 7.3% growth this year, which will be higher than China’s official growth forecast of 6%. This is not far from the financial market survey agency Refinitiv predicts that China can achieve a level of 8.4%. This means that the growth of the United States this year may rival or even surpass that of China.

Bru Suras, chief economist of the US consulting firm RSM, also raised the US growth forecast for this year to 7.2%. The rationale is that the US rescue plan is large and the anti-epidemic work has made great progress. He even thinks that this forecast may be too conservative.

The economic growth of the United States has been lagging behind that of China since 1976. According to World Bank data, the closest growth of the two countries can be traced back to the Internet bubble in 1999, when the United States grew 4.8% and China 7.7%.

The CNN report pointed out that the United States, as a mature economy, can be said to be a great achievement if its growth rate is similar to or even surpasses China.

However, some scholars have pointed out that these figures are only predictions after all. If vaccination problems or the virus continue to mutate, the recovery of the United States may be affected. It may be difficult to achieve growth comparable to China even after this year. This is because China’s population and productivity advantages are greater than those of the United States, which is sufficient to allow China’s economy to accelerate in the medium and long term.