China Revises 2007 GDP

China's statistics bureau said the nation's economy grew faster in 2007 than previously estimated, a revision that vaulted the nation to third from 4th among the world's largest economies in U.S. dollar terms. The National Bureau of Statistics recently revised its estimate of growth in annual GDP, the total value of goods and services produced in an economy, to 13% in 2007 from its earlier estimate of 11.9% and initial estimate of 11.4%. The bureau is expected to release initial figures for 2008 GDP this month, and the higher 2007 figure could lead to a faster-than-expected slowdown in growth. China's economy likely grew 6.9% in 2008's fourth quarter from the year-ago period, and 9.2% in full-year 2008, according to median forecasts of economists in a Dow Jones survey. That would be considerably slower than in 2007, though details aren't clear as the statistics bureau didn't provide breakdowns of quarterly GDP. The bureau said 2007 GDP totaled 25.731 trillion yuan, an increase of 777.6 billion yuan from the previous estimate. The new total is equivalent to $3.383 trillion at the average market-exchange rate for the yuan in 2007. That edges out Germany, formerly the world's third-largest economy with 2007 GDP of $3.321 trillion. In calculations based not on market-exchange rates but on purchasing-power parity, China has long been the world's second-largest economy after the U.S.