Now the Third

Japan is now the third largest economy in the world. The biggest economy is still the USA, but China has surpassed Japan as the second largest economy.

This does not say much, though. Japan has the world's tenth largest population, with about 127 million humans. Meanwhile, China has the largest population on Earth, about 1 341 million humans. Thus, China has a population that is more than ten times bigger than that of Japan. It is actually more noteworthy that China has not surpassed Japan much earlier, given these population figures. Each Chinese citizen still just has about a tenth per capita as large economy as each Japanese.

The main reason that Japan's economy is so much bigger per capita is, of course, the communistic dictatorship of China, whereas the Chinese economic growth over the last years is due to the capitalism that is still allowed in the nominal communistic country. China can come back when its economic size relative to Japan reflects its population's size. At that time, this might be something to discuss.