america_down

more like china_going_to_own_the_rest_of_the_world_in_50_years

Hopefully that would be a wake-up call to the idiot governmental officials in this country to actually take action, but I've learned that you can't unteach stupidity when its in the minds of 50 year olds.

I bet if we had as many people as they did we would have like 10 times what they have...but we just don't. Do you realize how large their work force is?

http://i.imgur.com/znh44fR.jpg

plz no

I didn't have the opportunity to look at the actual data because it prompts my old university's web system to come up for god knows what reason, but a quick Google search reveals that with GDP, the most commonly used metric for measuring size of economies, the US is still nearly twice the size of China's economy.

Even if China does surpass the US in economic size, I'm not too concerned. China's "rise to economic dominance" isn't the outlier, it's the fact that China was so hobbled for so long. This is a return to what you would expect, not a an anomaly. And good luck sustaining those growth rates over the next twenty years without fracturing your country.

That being said, I'm glad this article was brought up here because I'm sure a community of TF2 players are equipped with the tools to discuss this insight in a rational manner.

Why should americans care? We have beer and bacon, we dont need an economy

The wealthier the world the better. God bless capitalism.

That article is trash.

The US is now second to China in terms of GDP PPP. So, Gross Domestic Product (the sum value of all goods and services produced in a country in a given year) adjusted for Purchasing Power Parity. PPP is where you adjust GDP for the cost of living in the country. Because China is still a lot poorer than the US on a per person (per capita) basis, the cost of living is still much lower; Chinese people can buy way more with (Chinese equivalent of) $1 than an American can with $1. In fact, that is also why Chinese products are really cheap for Americans to buy.

What really matters for comparing how large the economies of two countries are is GDP, not adjusted for PPP; if you don't adjust for PPP, you can actually see how much these countries produce per year on a global standard. Basically, why would you want to adjust for cost of living in that country when determining which country is more powerful? It doesn't make sense, and that's why PPP is usually reserved for analyzing how well individual people are doing in a country.

If you look at regular GDP figures, you can see the the US is still way ahead of China (about a factor of 2): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28nominal%29#Lists

Even if China passes us (which should happen in about 10-15 years), it's not a big deal. China has 1.4 billion people, while the US has 320 million. So even though the average American produces way more than the average Chinese person, there are ~3.8 times as many Chinese people.

This is a slightly more subjective point, but China's one child policy (effectively a 1.3 child policy on average) means that China's population (and their workforce) will start declining soon. Immigration means America's will continue to slowly increase. So in 50 years (barring some world changing war or whatever), China will actually be weighed down with an old population and America will still be growing slowly but surely.

tldr: article sucks and way over simplifies; 'Murica still #1

Thank you for those comments Alkaline, you seem to know your shit.

I just tought the article was good to share.

I think the threat will depend on which services and good they can produce in the next years.
Working conditions have improved, and actually a lot of shit they were producing in the recent years now starting to switch to even poorer countries.
Problem is that China is industrializing really quickly and a larger part of the population can now access to goods.
I agree tho that the adjusting bullshit is dumb

I went to China last month and I can say for a fact that the amount of growth that's happening there is not sustainable.

Sure you have buildings appearing of thin air and money explosions left and right, but the management and general infrastructure isn't up to the task of regulation. You can have fancy posh hotels and staggering skyscrapers, but if you can't fix the disgusting amounts of pollution, poverty, and general corruption that's plaguing your society, watch all the effort crumble away sometime in the future.

Rather than continual growth, I believe China would be much better off trying to regulate their society and fix the vast multitude of internal problems first so they're better equipped for long term stability.

also, this list is sorted by GDP in US DOLLARS. Suck it, anyone who doesn't use our currency. how do you measure who is able to pay for more aircraft carriers, manned landings on the moon, and football stadiums with?

US dollars.

you're damn right.

Does Economy size really matter?

We're still gonna be sat here this winter with our heaters on playing games. Being the second, first or sixth largest will make zero difference to our life.

But then you see stuff like this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbDeS_mXMnM

China's Ghost Cities. They are building unrelentingly atm.

I knew Lord Deng would lead us to glory! (So glad I'm in Canada)

Actually I saw an interesting video about war, by the way things look we might not have a major war in the next 50+ years

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NbuUW9i-mHs&list=UUsXVk37bltHxD1rDPwtNM8Q

r o f l

Ghost cities are actually a thing here and I certainly do agree with #13 that the chinese infrastructure and political system is nowhere near capable of sustaining this amount of growth over the next years. Pollution, Environmental Problems (Waste etc.), and an oversized, corrupt and inefficient government apparatus will slow growth over the next years, especially since more chinese citizens are going to become more aware of those problems that inhibit their quality of life. The chinese government has been making an effort to educate their children (although one could argue that the way it's done here is far from being a good one). However, that proves that not only is China moving towards a more educated society, opening up new economic possibilities outside of a large industrial sector and thus slowly moving towards an economy focused on services, but also a society that is more demanding due to a raised awareness of the outside world.

That is certainly true for the areas that were initially used for cheap production, mostly along the coastline. Since then, wealth and thus the demand for better working conditions in these regions has increased, causing a lot of chinese companies to move inside the country where working conditions are still poor and productions costs can be kept very low. I expect the same process to happen there, causing a gradual increase of general wealth in china as production companies are forced to pay better wages. This might be a very slow process, however, and can be slowed down even more when companies move to cheaper countries. In the long term and on a large scale, both an increase in working conditions and wages can be expected though.

I think the one child policy and the associated decline in population will not hit China as hard as it would any western country. The fact that western societies struggle so much with declining birth rates is the existence of an extensive welfare system (in european countries even more so than in the US) and a very high life expectancy. China does not yet come anywhere near the western world in terms of medical support, quality and accessibility, and chinese people work (and are expected to work) a lot longer than we are. It is not uncommon to see people in their 60s and 70s still working smaller jobs. That's why I believe that while China will be affected in the long run, it won't be as drastic as it might seem.

-

Overall, I believe that neither GDP nor GDP PPP in itself are good measurements how successful a country is, overall, especially since China and the United States, as many people have pointed out, differ a lot in terms of economic structure, political system, size of population, living costs etc. That is why skandinavian countries (Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland) have the highest ratings for quality of life. All this article does is draw a comparison between the United States and China, describing a development that everyone was well aware of.

China has already began relaxing on the one child policy as of last year, so it will definitely not hit China as hard as people think it will. The main problem honestly lies in the fact that the government controls everything, by that I mean, all the banking institutions, oil production, electricity, etc. Unlike the US when the financial institution fails, there is government back up, but when the banking institutions in China fails, the economy probably will go into the shitter.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-10/china-fake-data-to-skew-more-export-numbers.html

A lot of good points have been said already, but here are a few more I can think of off of the top of my head:

Check the military spending statistics. The US is in the lead by far - I haven't calculated the numbers myself but it's been speculated that the US spends more than the top 20 countries combined.

China's rise in economic power relied on its economic interdependency with the US - it thrived because of the US, not in spite of it. I don't think China will be able to create their own world economic system anytime soon.

China's more concerned with the stability of East Asia as a whole rather than acquiring hegemonic power in the global system.

I'm not claiming to be an East Asian buff but I think there's a lot of cultural ignorance when people look at China's growth in the 21st century. It's important to acknowledge the historical context of East Asia and the actual implications of China's rise in economic growth (as many others have said already).

Afghanistan used euro as international currency, but your intervention surely fixed that :D

if they fail, the bank of toquio also takes care of everything and Japan didn't collapse. monetary policy is a really strong weapon