Although some seems to think that the “end on an era of ultra-cheap Chinese exports” is upon us, still pretty much everything you buy nowadays is stamped with the mark “Made in China”, at least somewhere along the lines. You might think that this is a relatively recent phenomenon. But even with the modern economic boom, China had a much greater share of the world’s GDP 500 years ago.
The graph above shows the share of GDP over the last 500 years for China, India, Japan, Latin America, Western Europe, and United States. (Keep in mind that the change in population size will effect the size of the GDP)