Ole Scheeren has said China will soon start producing enough architect practices capable of designing the huge schemes currently being drawn up by overseas firms.

The German architect, who led OMA’s project to build the China Central Television Station in Beijing, said Asia will soon become a creative as well as economic centre for the world.

“Things will start to change and China will shift from being the world’s factory to having more and more creative output,” he told German press agency DPA. “This is part of the future – there will no longer be just ‘made in China’ but also ‘designed in China’.”

His comments come after the global chairman of the world’s biggest architect, Anglo-Chinese practice Aedas, warned that local Chinese firms were starting to get their acts together. “There are not many of them yet but in the next few years we’ll find more and more local mainland architects, probably trained in the US, being very successful,” said Keith Griffiths.

Nearly half the firms questioned in Building Design’s WA100 survey of the world’s largest practices said China was their number one country for growth.

The importance of China was underlined this week by Goldman Sachs executive Jim O’Neill, the man who coined the “bric” phrase – given to the then-emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China – nearly 10 years ago.

“Our future prosperity depends on China being successful,” he said. “This idea that China does well at everyone else’s expense is nonsense.” He added that by 2016, China will be a bigger importer than the US.