China surpassed Japan to become the world's second largest economy in 2010.

China's nominal GDP for 2010 was about $5.9 trillion, said China's National Bureau of Statistics. Japan's nominal GDP was $5.47 trillion in 2010. Japan is now the world's third largest economy, behind the United States and China. But China still has a long way to go to narrow the per capita GDP gap with Japan—China's per capita GDP is only 10 percent of Japan's.