When the Italian economy first overtook Britain's, the landmark 1987 moment was dubbed “Il Sorpasso”. Newspapers reported celebrations in the streets of Rome. A far more momentous rite of passage has just occurred with little fuss: China has finally arrived at the top of the rankings of global exporters, displacing Germany. China exported $957bn of goods in the first 10 months of 2009, compared with $917bn for Germany, according to customs data compiled by Global Trade Information Services, a Geneva-based firm. Data for the last two months of the year are unlikely to cause China to cede that hard-won crown.

The celebrations in Beijing will be muted: for the planners hoping to increase the share of consumption within the mix of economic growth, a reminder of the country's export-dependence is not especially welcome. The real party will come when China becomes the world's biggest importer: that will be a more impressive measure of the country's new economic heft. At present, China ranks second, with imports of $710bn between January and September 2009. It last year overtook Germany, which imported goods worth $677bn in this period, the latest for which data is available, but still lags far behind the US, with imports of $1,122bn.

That sorpasso could take place within as little as three years given rising US savings rates and the prodigious taste for western goods of many Chinese consumers. The ramifications could extend far beyond the dry realm of trade talks, and into the ever-mutating one of language. People generally need to speak the language of their biggest customers. For many years, this meant English, first with received pronunciation, then with an American twang. Soon the bigshot will be Chinese. If this linguistic balance of power shifts eastwards, that will reflect not China's export miracle, but its coming import miracle.