http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_count...inal)_estimates

2009 2010
1 US 14,002.739 14,050.753
2 China 4,832.992 5,302.660
3 Japan 4,992.846 4,724.695
4 Germany 3,060.312 3,008.993
5 France 2,499.146 2,527.606
6 UK 2,007.049 2,027.927
7 Italy 1,987.836 1,987.445
8 Spain 1,397.232 1,390.760
9 Russia 1,163.645 1,329.377
10 Brazil 1,268.508 1,317.251
11 Canada 1,229.367 1,244.597
12 India 1,185.726 1,234.044
13 Mexico 827.189 863.357
14 Australia 755.066 744.265
15 Netherlands 742.966 744.088
16 South Korea 727.111 740.594
17 Turkey 552.180 535.324
18 Indonesia 468.389 503.819

but like only one or two cities in China are considered "developed cities" by International Monetary Fund's (IMF) definition (GDP per capita > $10K)

hey look at the numbers carefully... china is 3rd on that list...
But i personally believe that PRC will be 2nd by end of 2010.

Nominal GDP sucks. PPP GDP is better, since it takes into account inflation and cost of living for each country.

This is an endless debate in economics but I believe in comparing countries in international competitiveness nominal is better. PPP is good for some living standards but nominal takes into account international scale things like PRC's ability to buy western bonds/loans as a government (i.e. their stake of ownership in the US) while PPP is just a good indication of future prospects.

In 2020, my friends, China will become the world's superpower.

^ Are you kidding.

Shanghai will become an China's first "international financial centre" by 2020. (if you do not count Hong Kong of course) China will continue to take five year plans to achieve it's goals.

China will be the world's largest GDP. A position it occupied for the past 2 millenia.

Largest share of world GDP is only one factor of superpower. China's SCO will need to rival NATO (which occupies 80% of the world defense spending).

China also doesn't have an exportable doctrine like Soviet style socialism, US imperialism/democracy.

Right now... China's influence is mainly through it's status as "the manufacturing juggernaut of the world".... or the "sweatshop factory of the world" lol.

The list also change because the value of the currency.

Before the U.K. always had a higher GDP then France. Now the Brittisch Pound very low, so France GDP is higher.

I also thought that Korea before had a higher GDP then the Netherlands. But the Korean Won is now also very low, so the Netherlands gain one possition and go to the 15th place.

well gdp was never meant to make accurate comparisons between countries.. i mean if the difference is heaven and earth then it works, but various

factors like differences in ratios of renting home to owning homes between countries skews up the comparisons.

(renting homes, everyone has to keep on paying rent, gets added to gdp; owning homes you don't pay anyone, so no addition to gdp; in reality the 2

situations are the same when considering the strength of the economy but the gdp can be very different)