Nikkei survey says China's GDP will grow 5.1% in 2022 (1), Moody's say 4.8%. Morgan Stanley says 5.5% (2).

Given the uncertainties involved - such as whether China can avoid much larger COVID outbreaks and how the Evergrande bankruptcy and the related showdown in the Chinese property market - the difference between the two figures hardly matter.

Nor does it really matter that China's official GDP figures are almost definitely overstated. Lots of foreign banks and economists have constructed shadow indices to estimate Chinese GDP based on stuff like market indices and share volume; inbound and outbound tourism numbers (that one'll take hit this year), home sales; car registrations, loan and bank deposit growth and import and export volumes and values. There's a pretty good consensus that you can deduct about 1% from Chinese official GDP numbers to arrive at the real figure.    

It's worth noting that the CPC Politburo broke with tradition by not announcing a formal target this year underscoring the uncertainties.

But barring some major downside event, it's probably safe to conclude that China's GDP will grow between 4 and 4.5% in 2022.

Here's why that's significant and why the exact figure isn't that important.
China's GDP growth will almost definitely exceed that of the US which is mostly predicted to be between 3 and 4%. Of course the caveat about "no major unforeseen events" applies to the US too. For that matter, trade between the two countries is so important that a major adverse economic event in one would probably also have a negative impact on the other.

So why does it matter if China's economy grows faster than America's? 

Well's lets go back to the fall of the Soviet Union. Deng Xiaoping and other CCP  leaders concluded that the Soviet Union collapsed because they became involved in an arms race with the US and expensive foreign military adventures in Afghanistan and elsewhere. This overemphasis on defense spending led to economic stagnation (not enough investment in productive sectors) and popular discontent (not enough resources devoted consumer goods.)

So the PRC needed to avoid an arms race with the US. This strategy was eventually formulated as Hu Jintao's "Peaceful Rise" strategy. (3).While this sounds nice, it could better be understood as "avoid major foreign conflicts until we've achieved military parity with the other great powers".

Currently and perhaps overly optimistically, the date for that process to be completed is 2035. That doesn't mean China plans to start a war in 2035. It means that they believe that by 2035 if there is a war they have a decent chance of winning. 

The key to this strategy is to achieve military expansion and modernization without triggering a Soviet-style economic collapse, this implies limiting annual increases i the defense budget to not much more than the increase in GDP. Currently, the Chinese focus is on building advanced weapons systems and developing doctrine for their use rather than mass deployment. In fact, they've been aggressively reducing total troop numbers. 

 
the key to this strategy is that the Chinese economy needs to keep growing faster than the US economy (and that of US allies) so they can afford to build up their military without either cutting investment in other economic sectors or failing to deliver continuous improvements in material living standards.
     
So how can the US counter this strategy? (Assuming they should since  as I've already noted the Chinese plan isn't to attack the US, it's to reach a point where if such a war does occur they have a chance of winning.)

Well they can either cripple China's economy growth, provoke a war with China before China achieves strategic parity or - wait for it - they could grow their own economy faster. So far Biden is vacillating between the first two options. 

(1) https://asia.nikkei.com/Economy/China-GDP-forecast-to-grow-5.1-in-2022-Nikkei-survey

(2) https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/03/morgan-stanley-on-chinas-gdp-economy-in-2022.html

(3) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%27s_peaceful_rise

(4) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernization_of_the_People%27s_Liberation_Army

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