His party just suffered bruising losses in the midterm elections, but the bad news won't stop coming for President Barack Obama. The latest: He's just been dethroned as the world's most powerful person.

Replacing him atop the Forbes magazine list is Chinese President Hu Jintao.

Obama fell to No. 2, while Saudi Arabia King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al Saud is No. 3.

The magazine assessed power using four criteria: the number of people one influences; one's ability to project power beyond one's immediate sphere of influence; control of or access to significant financial resources; and how actively one wields power. There are 68 people on the list, one for every 100 million people on the planet.

Forbes demoted Obama because of the the massive midterm election loses, in which the Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives and barely held on to the Senate.

"It's quite a come-down for last year's most powerful person, who after enacting widespread reforms in his first two years in office will be hard-pressed to implement his agenda in the next two," Forbes said. "He can take comfort in the fact that he remains commander-in-chief of the world's largest, deadliest military, leader of the world's largest (in spending) and most dynamic economy and holds the unofficial title of 'Leader of the Free World.'"

Jintao, who was second on last year's list, was elevated to the top spot in part because he is the leader of 1.3 billion people -- one-fifth of the world's population. His control is near dictatorial -- "he can divert rivers, build cities, jail dissidents and censor Internet without meddling from pesky bureaucrats or the courts," the magazine said. China also has surpassed Japan to become the world's second-largest economy and is on track to overtake the United States as the world's largest economy in 25 years (but not on a per-capita basis).

Here are the top 10:

1. Hu Jintao

2. Barack Obama

3. Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al Saud

4. Vladimir Putin

5. Pope Benedict XVI

6. Angela Merkel

7. David Cameron

8. Ben Bernanke

9. Sonia Gandhi

10. Bill Gates

Other notables on the list: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (No. 20), Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner (No. 28), Kim Jong Il (No. 31), the Dalai Lama (No. 39), Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg (No. 40), Osama bin Laden (No. 57) and Oprah Winfrey (No. 64).