Was China the biggest economy of last 2000 years?

An American Nobel winner claims that by 2040 China will be the biggest economy on Earth and he also states that China had been the biggest economy on earth for the last two thousand years.

Here is the article: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/04/123000000000000

I came across an article by an Indian business man who claims that India has been the biggest economy for the last two thousand years. 

Who is right?

I done some researches and most sources claim that China was the biggest and most sophisticated economy on earth (even contemporary Romans didnt understand what the principle of inflation was). 

How about Ancient India?

Did Ancient Indians has clear identity as ancient Chinese (who called themselves Han Chinese in ancient time, distinguished themselves from "barbarians" (non-Chinese))? Did ancient India has as sophisticated economy as the more centralized state of ancient China?

As for history though, one must decide whether one is calculating it by region or by state.

Many conveniently equated historical China to the past imperial dynasties, often ignoring the fact that current PRC territories cover very different areas from historical imperial dynasties based on the Central Plains.

 

Same with India - historically, there was no unified Indian state similar in size as today's, so when talking about historical Indian economy, are they talking about areas which include today's Pakistan and Bangladesh, even parts of Afghanistan, but excluding many southern areas?

 

When talking about historical Roman economy, it is clear that it refers to the economy of the Roman republic/empire, with the constantly changing boundaries, but ruled from Rome.

 

The same cannot be said for historical China (which have separate states like Khitans, Tibetans, Jurchens etc., at various times), or India.

 

Comparison should be made apple to apple, and it is not viable for India and China.

 

Have you ever studied Chinese legal tradition? The Qin law was in every way as sophisticated as the Roman law.

The Chinese had very uniform trading rules and administrative rules in China proper. Rules in Vietnam and Korea were more localized. Though the Chinese did not trade outside their territory, China is a huge and varied land.

 

I think that it is safe to say that China had a huge economy in their glory days.

 

Romans prospered by exploiting western asia and northern africa (and many other regions indeed!) for agricultural goods, but that's not so directly linked to these regions having been populated by "developped economies or civilizations". You know that is fact of reality that in satrapies, economy might go for some time very, very well, but that's by no means a lasting model; romans' merits, if there is such a notion as a merit of an invading army, are in the fact that organized a political system with more rights and liberties than in competting eastern empires; when arabs conquered western asia from "romans" (byzantine), they kept their system of administration and the fiscal structure, and that's not for no reason!