Economy

Asia has the third largest nominal GDP of all continents, after North America and Europe,[citation needed] but the largest when measured in PPP. As of 2010, the largest economies in Asia are China, Japan, India, South Korea and Indonesia.

Founded in 1893, Novosibirsk is the largest city in Siberia, with a population of about 1.5 million.

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the economies of the PRC and India have been growing rapidly, both with an average annual growth rate of more than 8%. Other recent very high growth nations in Asia include Malaysia, the Philippines, Pakistan, Thailand, Vietnam, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, Cyprus, and mineral-rich nations such as Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Iran, Brunei, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Oman.

China was the largest and most advanced economy on earth for much of recorded history, until the British Empire (excluding India) overtook it in the mid 19th century. Japan has had for only several decades after WW2 the largest economy in Asia and second-largest of any single nation in the world, after surpassing the Soviet Union (measured in net material product) in 1986 and Germany in 1968. (NB: A number of supernational economies are larger, such as the European Union (EU), the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) or APEC).

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Japan's GDP was almost as large (current exchange rate method) as that of the rest of Asia combined. In 1995, Japan's economy nearly equaled that of the USA as the largest economy in the world for a day, after the Japanese currency reached a record high of 79 yen/dollar. Economic growth in Asia since World War II to the 1990s had been concentrated in Japan as well as the four regions of South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore located in the Pacific Rim, known as the Asian tigers, which have now all received developed country status, having the highest GDP per capita in Asia.

It is forecasted that India will overtake Japan in terms of nominal GDP by 2020. In terms of GDP per capita, both nominal and PPP-adjusted, South Korea will become the second wealthiest country in Asia by 2025, overtaking Germany, the United Kingdom and France. By 2027, according to Goldman Sachs, China will have the largest economy in the world.