Nation may top Japan GDP in '09

China is likely to overtake Japan to become the world's second largest economy, either this year or by 2010, a research paper issued recently by the China Policy Institute of the University of Nottingham (UK) has revealed.

Yao Shujie, an author of the research paper, had said two years ago that China would become the No 2 in the world's economic pecking order in 2018.

"Right now, we don't have figures for Japan's GDP in 2008, but I think China may have already overtaken Japan last year," Yao told China Daily in a telephonic interview yesterday.