Photos: China prepares to leap into 1st place as world's largest economy by end of 2014

UNTIL 1890 China was the world’s largest economy, before America surpassed it. By the end of 2014 China is on track to reclaim its crown. Comparing economic output is tricky: exchange rates get in the way. Simply converting GDP from renminbi to dollars at market rates may not reflect the true cost of living. Bread and beer may be cheaper in one country than another, for example. To account for these differences, economists make adjustments based on a comparable basket of goods and services across the globe, so-called purchasing-power parity (PPP). New data released on April 30th from the International Comparison Programme, a part of the UN, calculated the cost of living in 199 countries in 2011. On this basis, China’s PPP exchange rate is now higher than economists had previously estimated using data from the previous survey in 2005: a whopping 20% higher. So China, which had been forecast to overtake America in 2019 by the IMF, will be crowned the world's pre-eminent country by the end of this year according to The Economist’s calculations. The American Century ends, and the Pacific Century begins.

CHINESE TAKEOVER? PURCHASING POWER IN DEVELOPING WORLD LEAPS OVER DEVELOPED NATIONS
The World Bank's International Comparison Program is conducted every six years and determined that, based on 2011 prices, the purchasing power of the U.S. yuan will surpass that of the U.S. dollar in 2014 despite China's economy being just 60 percent the size of America's at market exchange rates.
India has also leap-frogged over Japan to become the world's third largest economy
when measured by purchasing power.
The current top 10 economies according to the report were as follows:

1. United States
2. China
3. India
4. Japan

5. Germany

6. Russia

7. Brazil
8. France
9. United Kingdom
10. Indonesia