BEIJING -- With its growing financial assets and expanding global economic reach, China has gained a new confidence in combating a financial crisis, former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said Saturday.

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Kissinger also said China, the world's second largest economy, will likely grow into the largest economy in terms of GDP within one or two decades, which has led to several important shifts for the country.

"Within China, the experience of the past several years has produced a new confidence in the country's capacity to perform creatively in the face of crisis," the 88-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate said at the Second Global Think Tank Summit held in Beijing.

Meanwhile, among its foreign partners, the country's fast growth has produced a new appreciation for its views and insights, and a realization that that a sustainable reform of the global financial system will need to account for its growing role, he said.

Citing IMF analysts' estimation that an additional one percent of real growth in China, sustained for five years, adds 0.4 of one percent to global growth, he said the country's growth was one of the essential factors that prevented a far worse global downturn in 2008.

"Its crucial role in combating the effects of the financial crisis underscored the dramatic transformation of its position in the world economy and international financial system," he said.