Sinobull Financial Group (fka GTCI)

[myDDdotcom]

China Overtakes Italy as World's Sixth Biggest Economy

ROME, Dec 31, 2001 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- China has snatched the sixth place
from Italy in the table of the world's top economic powers, the Bloomberg news
agency reported on Monday.

Over the 12-month period ending in September 2001, Italy's GDP was 1.1 trillion
U.S. dollars, Bloomberg said, noting that this was less than the 1.2 trillion
dollars cited by China's central statistics office in a press report Monday.

Chinese authorities were quoted in a top national daily as forecasting gross
domestic product for 2001 at 9,580 billion yuan (1.2 trillion dollars).

Because the period referred to by Chinese officials (January-December 2001) was
different to the statistics for Italy, some doubt remained over whether China
had actually overtaken Italy.

If the Bloomberg rankings are confirmed, Italy will slip to the seventh place in
the table of economic powers, behind China and France which share fifth place.
The top four are the United States, Japan, Germany and Britain.

China, which recently joined the World Trade Organisation (WTO), has averaged
GDP growth of 8.3 percent in the last five years. Italy's average growth has
been under 3 percent.


imho, Jerome