COLOGNE, Germany - China will wrest the "world's champion exporter" title from Germany as early as 2008, the federal foreign trade body BFAI has predicted.

Already this year, China will overtake the United States as the world's number two exporter and fight neck-and-neck with Germany for the number one position, BFAI director Gerd Herx said Monday.

However, Germany will just succeed in holding onto the title for the fifth year in a row in 2007.

But with an estimated US$1.4 trillion (1.1 trillion euros) in exports in 2008, China will leapfrog Germany in 2008, Herx said.

China's increasing success as an exporter rests on its electronic goods, where the country is already the number one with total exports of US$300 billion, ahead of the US and South Korea, BFAI estimated.

Its second-biggest category of exports is clothing and textiles.

Germany's export strength lies in engineering and technological goods.