The Relative Economic Size of China

The excerpts below are from a WSJ article discussing the profitability of China. What I found interesting in the article is the tremendous size of the markets inside China.

Many foreign companies have long viewed China as a land of great potential but little immediate profit. As recently as the late 1990s, most Western marketers found this country more frustrating than fruitful.

Although better known as a prodigious exporter, China has become the world's biggest market for cellphones, with more than 500 million wireless subscribers . . . It is second to the U.S. in number of Internet users -- 162 million . . . .

China is the second-biggest market, after the U.S., for personal computers and cars. It also accounts for a huge share of the global demand for commodities such as iron ore . . .

. . . . This year, China for the first time will contribute more to global economic growth than any other country, including the U.S., according to estimates by the International Monetary Fund. With its economy expanding at a rate of more than 11% this year, China is on track to surpass Germany as the world's third-largest national economy by dollar value, although its annual output is still less than one-quarter of the U.S.'s at market exchange rates.