China may have reached a long-looming milestone by surpassing Japan as the world’s second-largest economy, Financial Times reported. Speculation was sparked after Yi Gang, director of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE), on Friday said in an interview on the SAFE website: "China is in fact already the second-biggest economy. With the expansion of the economic base, the growth rate should certainly gradually slow down." However, Yi, who is also deputy central bank governor, did not specify whether he was referring to China’s GDP at market prices or in purchasing power parity terms. In PPP terms, China has already been the second-largest economy for years. Analysts believe that if China has not already overtaken Japan, it will very soon. In 2009, Japan’s GDP was worth about USD$5.08 trillion, while China’s GDP was initially reported to be not far behind at about US$4.9 trillion.