China Overtakes Germany As Third-Largest Economy.
The Washington Post (1/15, A16, Cha) reports, "China leapfrogged over Germany to become the world's third-largest economy in 2007, sooner than predicted, underscoring how quickly the concentration of global economic power has shifted." The Post continues, "While earlier estimates had put growth of China's gross domestic product that year at 11.9 percent, revised figures released by the government statistics bureau Wednesday show that its economy actually expanded by 13 percent to $3.38 trillion. That compares with Germany's 2007 GDP of $3.32 trillion."
CNN (1/15) notes in its website, "Although the world's top economies, the United States and Japan, are in recession, the most pessimistic estimates for China's growth in upcoming years runs about 5 percent. That could allow China's GDP to overtake Japan's, currently $4.3 trillion, within a few years." According to World Bank estimates, "China's economic growth is about 7.5 percent. But China has seen a sharp decline in exports in November and December as other major economies struggle, and the bank's analysts say rates below 6 percent could worsen the rest of the world's slump."
According to Chinese news agency Xinhua (1/15), "The pace was the fastest since 1994 when the GDP expanded by 13.1 percent." Yet in spite of this growth, Germany is "still ahead in per capita income," Germany's Deutsche Welle (1/14) noted.
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