John Ross — China has overtaken the US to become the world's largest industrial producer

This is pretty astounding. And China is far from being a developed country yet. Long way to go before that and it is leaving the rest of the world in the dust. The question is whether this kind of growth can last. But China sailed through it's first pull back while the developed world is still trying to recover.

It is this enormous rise in China’s output which also drove the much discussed global shift in industrial production in favor of developing countries - in the six year period to June 2013, the latest date for which combined data is available, industrial production in advanced economies fell by 7% while output in developing economies rose by 65%.

...China accounted for the overwhelming bulk of the increase in the developing economies. Industrial production in Latin America rose by 5%, in Africa and the Middle East by 6%, and in Eastern Europe by 10%. But China’s industrial production in this period rose by 100% - industrial output in developing Asia as a whole rose by 65%, but the majority of this was accounted for by China....

It is naturally important not to exaggerate this scale of advance by China in industrial production. China’s industrial output is now considerably larger in value terms than the US, but the United States retains a substantial technological lead which it will take China a considerable period to catch up with. Due to a long period of globalization and consolidation by US companies, both processes which are only at early stages in China, US manufacturing firms are still four times the size of China’s in terms of overall global revenue– although between 2007 and 2013 Chinese manufacturing firms overtook Germany to become the third largest manufacturing companies of any country....

For the first time for over a century the US has been definitively replaced as the world’s largest industrial producer. Such a once in a century shift can literally only be described as historic. 

Key Trends in the World Economy
China has overtaken the US to become the world's largest industrial producer
John Ross | Senior Fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China