Abstract: The“14th Five-Year Plan”and the“Outline of 2035 goals”clearly state that per capita GDP will reach the level of moderately developed countries by 2035, which provides an important strategic guidance and time plan for China to cross the middle-income trap. Based on making a deep explanation of the concept of the middle-income trap, this paper uses the typical facts summary, the analysis of convergence as well as a quantile vector autoregressive model to draw the following conclusions: first, with the development of China’s economy, the traditional growth engines can no longer provide sustained impetus for economic growth, while technological progress and institutional quality are playing an increasingly prominent role in driving economic growth; second, as a middle-to-high income country, China coexists with the developed countries such as the United States and Japan in a same convergence club, which shows that China has not fallen into the middle income trap, it just stays at the middle income stage; third, the recent decline in efficiency caused by the “technology-capital mismatch”has slowed down economic growth to some extent, but the impact of this effect is relatively limited and still within a reasonable range. On the contrary, the effectiveness of the institutional level improvement has remained stable, and the institutional quality has played a positive role in promoting long-term growth. It can be seen that correcting the“technology-capital dislocation”as well as continuously giving play to the institutional advantages are the key guarantee and the only way for China to catch up with the developed countries.

Key words: middle-income trap, transition of economic growth driver, club convergence of economic growth, quantile vector autoregressive model.