CHINA has overtaken Japan to become the world's second-largest economy,after the United States.

This was confirmed by the data released today by the Japanese Cabinet Office, which shows Japan's nominal gross domestic product for the second quarter totaled US$1.288 trillion, less than China's US$1.337 trillion.

But Japan was ahead of China in the first half of 2010. China's economy expanded 11.1 percent from a year earlier to US$2.55 trillion (17.28 trillion yuan) in the first half, compared with Japan's US$2.57 trillion.

Quarterly comparisons between China and Japan were "a little tricky because they do not take account of different seasonal patterns," said David Cohen, head of Asian forecasting at Action Economics in Singapore, according to Bloomberg news.

China's economic output was also larger than Japan's in the fourth quarter of 2009, but Japan's GDP rebounded to exceed China's in the first three months of this year.

However, the long-term trend decided that Japan was unlikely to retain its position as the world's second-biggest economy for the full year.

The second-quarter figures showed that Japan was in a L-shaped recession, plagued by domestic price deflation, shrinking internal demand, and an export-killing appreciation of the yen. Its GDP only edged up 0.4 percent year on year in the April-June period, far below the estimate of a 0.6-percent increase.