China may have astonished the world with its 51 gold medals at this year’s Beijing Olympic Games, but it is not just in sport that the country is rewriting the record books. The world’s fastest growing economy has almost certainly overhauled Germany this year to become the third largest in the world.
It is the second largest exporter of goods and will become the number one within a few years. It is the largest consumer of metals, the biggest emitter of carbon dioxide and will quite soon be the world’s largest consumer of primary energy.
