China Surpasses Japan; Now Second Largest Economy

China passed Japan in 2010 to become the world's second-largest economy after the U.S.

The Japanese government reported today that its economy shrank at a 1.1% annual rate for the last three months of the year, a period when China's gross domestic product climbed by 9.8% from a year earlier. With those figures, Japan's full-year GDP was $5.47 trillion—about 7% smaller than the $5.88 trillion China reported in January