China's economic transformation from export-based to consumer spending-based will help sustain the country's impressive growth performance and could propel China as the world's largest economy by around 2020, experts said.

During the annual spring meetings conducted by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), American Enterprise Institute resident fellow Desmond Lachman said if the present economic trends in China will continue, the country's economy could surpass the US economy in terms of size by the end of this decade.

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He, however, stressed it could probably be by around 2025 that China's consumption, which is still less than 50 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) at present, could become more important than that in the United States, which has a consumption to GDP ratio of 70 percent.

Lachman told the official Xinhua News Agency that a more balanced Chinese economy would make the country's growth performance more sustainable.

Another economist, however, said it could take longer for China's economy to overtake that of the US, depending on China's success in promoting the growth of the middle class as well as the country's consumption.

Barry Bosworth, a senior fellow at the American think tank Brookings Institution, said eventually China will grow to become the world's largest economy, surpassing the United States, but it could take a couple of decades.

Meanwhile, during the IMF annual springs meetings that concluded in the weekend, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said the global economy is faring better but at a very slow rate and at a "too fragile" situation.

Lagarde predicts global recovery to strengthen this year but the fund has cut its growth forecast due to a slowdown in the emerging economies.

The IMF forecasts China's growth this year at 7.5 percent, slower than last year's 7.7 percent, but analysts said the slow growth rate should be considered as a desirable adjustment to the country's more sustainable growth path.