Workers assemble toy cars inside a factory in Dongguan, South China's Guangdong Province on December 16, 2020. Photos: Cui Meng/GT

China's economic development not only leads to more people enjoying a better life but has also injected impetus to the recovery of global economy, which has been severely damaged by the COVID-19 pandemic, and the country will actively integrate with global market and deepen foreign cooperation, the Foreign Ministry (FM) said on Monday.

The remarks followed a report by UK-based think tank - the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) over the weekend, which predicted that China's GDP may overtake the US economy in 2028, five years earlier than its previous prediction.

The efficient containment of the coronavirus is one of the reasons why the "Chinese economy has sustained less economic damage than other major economies", hence the pace of China becoming the world's largest economy has speeded up, according to the report.

Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian told a briefing on Monday that the Chinese government has enforced the most comprehensive, strict, and thorough epidemic-control measures since the outbreak and given full play to the country's unique advantage that is "concentrating all resources to accomplish big things".

It is because that China can take the lead in bringing the epidemic under control and realizing work resumption that the country can achieve a better than expected rebound economically and socially, and, it is anticipated that China will be the only major economy in the world that can record a positive GDP growth this year, said Zhao.

China's GDP will grow 2 percent this year and accelerate to 7.9 percent in 2021, according to the latest report published by the World Bank last week. The report has attributed accelerated growth to the country's effective epidemic-control moves, strong policy support and resilient export volumes. 

China's GDP in the third quarter of 2020 expanded 4.9 percent, causing the economy to bounce back into the positive territory of 0.7 percent growth for the first three quarters, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics. Analysts predicted that the rate in the fourth quarter will climb to around 6 percent on a yearly basis.