By He Yini (chinadaily.com.cn)

The Chinese mainland is likely to avoid the middle-income trap and become the third high-income economy in five years after South Korea and Taiwan that went through the same process, the Beijing News reported on Monday

Many developing countries are faced with the possibility of getting stuck in low- or middle-income trap, but China will be able to avoid that by 2020, the report said citing Justin Lin Yifu, a Chinese economist and professor at Peking University.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, China's per capita GDP stood at $7,575 in 2014, a growth rate of 12 percent compared with that a year earlier.

China's growth rate of per capita GDP is much faster than that of developed countries' 2 percent average, which makes it possible for the second-largest economy to catch up, said Lin during the first Great Minds China Forum on Saturday.

He added that altogether 13 middle-income economies had succeeded in edging themselves into high-income ones between the year 1950 and 2008, among which only five were Asian countries.

The five are Japan and the "Four Asian Tigers" - Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan.