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Japan's people still are among the world's richest, with a per capita income of $37,800 last year, compared with China's $3,600. So are Americans at $42,240, their economy still by far the biggest. "We should be concerned about per capita GDP," said Kyohei Morita, chief economist at Barclays Capital in Tokyo. China overtaking Japan "is just symbolic," he said. "It's nothing more than that." But the symbolism may be exactly the "wake-up call" Japanese leaders need, said Schulz of the Fujitsu Research Institute. "Japan is always strangely inward looking," he said. "And nobody is doing anything about it." Japan's people appear resigned to the power shift. A national poll conducted earlier this year by the Asahi, one of Japan's biggest newspapers, showed a roughly equal split between those that believed Japan's fall to No. 3 posed a major problem and those who did not. More than half of the 2,347 respondents said Japan does not need to be a global superpower. The country's annualized growth in the second quarter was also sharply below expectations of 2.3 percent in a Kyodo news agency survey of analysts. On a quarterly basis, Japan's GDP
-- or the total value of the nation's goods and services -- grew 0.1 percent from the January-March period, the Cabinet Office said. Consumer spending, which accounts for about 60 percent of GDP, was flat from the previous quarter, the figures showed. Capital spending by companies rose 0.5 percent, while public investment fell 3.4 percent. The outlook for the third quarter is uncertain. Private consumption appears to be solid so far, helped in part by unusually hot weather, said Masamichi Adachi, senior economist at JP Morgan Securities Japan. But the slowing global economy is weakening exports and production. A stronger yen, which hit a 15-year high against the dollar last week, also poses a major risk for the country's export-driven economy. Yen appreciation reduces the value of repatriated profits for companies like Toyota Motor Corp. and Sony Corp. and makes their products more expensive abroad. The currency worries led Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda to say last week that he is closely monitoring foreign exchange rates. Bank of Japan Gov. Masaaki Shirakawa released a similar statement to try to calm markets.
[Associated
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