A woman wearing a mask walks past a wall painted with China's national flag in central Beijing, October 9, 2014. Beijing issued a yellow alert for air pollution on Wednesday with smog forecast to continue for the next three days until Saturday, said the B
A woman wearing a mask walks past a wall painted with China's national flag in central Beijing, October 9, 2014. Reuters/Kim Kyung-Hoon
A woman wearing a mask walks past a wall painted with China's national flag in central Beijing, October 9, 2014. Beijing issued a yellow alert for air pollution on Wednesday with smog forecast to continue for the next three days until Saturday, said the Beijing heavy air pollution response office, Xinhua News Agency reported. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon (CHINA - Tags: POLITICS ENVIRONMENT)

Despite the slowdown in its red-hot economy, China's growth story continues, threatening to dethrone the US as the world's largest economy in 2014 in terms of one indicator. This is the purchasing power parity, said the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The IMF had actually took into account the low cost of living in China as it calculated the Asian giant's gross domestic product (GDP) at $17.6 trillion, surpassing the United States at $17.4 trillion, reports The Wall Street Journal.

In April, the World Bank pointed out at by the end of 2014, China's GDP purchasing power parity terms would exceed that of the US. It would happen five years ahead of a previous forecast that China would overtake the US by 2019.

YouTube/Financial Times

The IMF data would mean China's share in the global economy rose to 16.5 per cent, while the US share is slightly lower at 16.3 per cent.

However, if the lower cost of living factor is excluded, the American economy would be significantly larger at $17.4 trillion versus China's $10.4 trillion. This would translate into a higher per capita of $55,000 a year for Americans, while Chinese per capita is only $8,000.

The new numbers indicate that it took Beijing only five years to become the world's biggest economy since it dislodged Japan as the world's second-largest economy in August 2010 when China logged a GDP for Q2 2010 of $1.337 trillion compared to Japan's $1.288 trillion.

At that time, Brookings Institute senior fellow Eswar Prassad pointed out, quoted by Bloomberg, "The resilience of China's growth during the crisis enable a number of other countries, particularly commodity-exporting economies, to ride on its coattails."

In 2009, China surpassed the US as the largest automobile market globally and also became the biggest buyer of iron ore and copper.