Will the trend continue and China's growth will make it number one or is this the peak before the bubble bursts? I think there is trouble ahead but then again, everyone is in the same stormy economy right now. If China can make it through this recession relatively unscathed and rebound quickly they could easily march on to the top spot, but it still sounds like a long shot.
China has overtaken Germany to become the world's third-largest economy earlier than expected, after estimates for the country's gross domestic product were revised higher.
The National Bureau of Statistics of China reported this morning it now believes the Chinese economy grew by 13% in 2007, up from an earlier estimate of 11.9% and China's highest annual growth rate since 1993.
Applying the revision to previous calculations carried out by the World Bank shows that China's gross national income reached $3.218 trillion in 2007 compared with $3.197tn for Germany.
Economists were already confident that China overtook Germany during 2008, but it now seems that the change occurred in a year earlier. China took fourth place from Britain in 2005, and now has Japan and the US in its sights.
China's rapid economic growth began to tail off last year, as the manufacturing powerhouse felt the impact of the woes sweeping the global economy. GDP growth fell to 9% in the third quarter of 2008, down from 10.1% in the second quarter and the fifth straight quarter of slowing growth.
