The China Thread

LONDON, December 20 (newratings.com) – China's economy grew last year by nearly twice the figure published earlier, according to a government report released in Beijing on Tuesday.

The government revised its figure of the country’s gross domestic product for 2004 upward to $2 trillion, taking the output growth figure to 16.8%. This represents an increase of $285 billion over the figure previously reported. A year-long census showed that millions of companies were unaccounted for last year, most of which were in the service sector, which is growing faster than the manufacturing sector, the National Bureau of Statistics said. The new data helped China replace Italy as the world's sixth largest economy in 2004, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. If Hong Kong were to be included in the figure, China would replace UK as the fourth largest economy in the world, behind only the US, Japan and Germany