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Word Bank: China is the third top economy

16 January 2009 15:22 (UTC +04:00)

China has become the worldâ€™s third-largest economy, surpassing Germany and closing rapidly on Japan, according to government and World Bank figures.
While earlier estimates had put growth of Chinaâ€™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 Germanyâ€™s 2007 GDP of $3.32 trillion.
Although the worldâ€™s top economies, the United States and Japan, are in recession, the most pessimistic estimates for Chinaâ€™s growth in upcoming years runs about 5 percent. That could allow Chinaâ€™s GDP to overtake Japanâ€™s, currently $4.3 trillion, within a few years.
The World Bankâ€™s estimate of Chinaâ€™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 bankâ€™s analysts say rates below 6 percent could worsen the rest of the worldâ€™s slump.