About this chart race
In 1820 China was the largest economy on earth by a wide margin - about 336 billion international dollars against 70 for the United Kingdom, then the workshop of the world. What follows is one of the great reversals in economic history. China stagnates through the Opium Wars, the Taiping Rebellion and a century of upheaval while the industrialising West races past. The United States takes first place in 1882 and holds it for 132 years. Then China returns: it passes the United States in 2014, and by 2022 leads by 27.0 trillion to 19.5 trillion.
India traces almost the same arc - among the two largest economies in the world in the 1820s, pushed far down the table under colonial rule, and back to third place by 2022. The United Kingdom, the leading economy in Europe for the whole of the nineteenth century, is no longer in the top five.
An important note on what is being measured. These are purchasing-power-parity figures in constant 2011 international dollars, the standard way economists compare output across countries and across centuries. On this measure China is already the world's largest economy. Measured instead at market exchange rates, the United States is still ahead. The two rankings genuinely disagree and neither is wrong - they answer different questions.
Figures before 1950 for China, India, Japan, Russia and Brazil are scholarly reconstructions at benchmark years rather than annual measurements, so the animation interpolates between those points. Russia's series begins in 1950.
A note on country names: long historical series like this one are compiled for present-day borders, so a figure shown under a modern country for a year before that country existed refers to the territory it now covers, not to a state that was on the map at the time. Where a well-known historical name applies to the whole span it is used instead, which is why Russia appears here as Russia / USSR.
This animated ranking shows how gdp, billion international dollars (2011 prices) changed across 12 series between 1820 and 2022. The bars re-order themselves as the years advance, so overtakes are visible as they happen rather than hidden inside a table. Use the list on the left to choose exactly who competes, drag the slider to jump to any year, or open the table view to read the underlying numbers.
As of 2022, China leads with 26,966.
Included in this race
China, United States, India, Japan, Germany, Russia, Indonesia, Brazil, France, United Kingdom, Italy, Spain.
Source
Data from Maddison Project Database 2023 (via Our World in Data). Check the stated period and methodology. Animated transitions between source observations are visual interpolation, not additional measurements.
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