Will China overtake US?

The US economy is currently growing at 3.1% per year (GDP: 10.99 trillion). The chinese economy is currently growing at 9.1% per year (GDP: 6.5 trillion). By my reckoning, if things continue as they are, china will have an equal GDP to the US by 2012. US military spending is cuurently 370 billion per year (not including iraq). Chinese defense spending is 65 billion per year, but is predicted to grow to 260 billion per year in the next few years. China now has AEGIS technology and it's own semi-stealth aircraft. They are modernising their armed forces and seeking to bring in technology from both foreign nations and indigenous reasearch. The US is on the high end of the tech curve, i.e. it doesn't cost much to make a simple missile but as it gets more complex, the costs increase exponentially.

The question is, is it possible for china to overtake the US in terms of GDP and military capabilities and with a possible russian renaissance, are we looking at a tri-polar world?

sources:

www.cia.gov...

www.cia.gov...

www.thenewatlantis.com...

i'm not racist but i have to say that they are taking over by quantity not economy

the chinese economy will go down again. thats what always happens. and if it does happen they will be depending on each other

how can you prove that it will go down?.....if china had the power to populate its deserts than we'd be in heck of a trouble.....dont just go accusing other countries because they are not better than the US....the british and european economy is way better than ours but you wouldnt go and talk about them now would you?

It's not what China's doing that's a threat to the US. The US's biggest threat is itself. The US will likely implode before China matches the US's GDP. If the current debt limit isn't raised soon, we'll be on the road to collapse within months based on the average daily debt increase.

As my history teacher always said, look to the quote in the Mahabarahta (an Indian epic):

"A civilization cannot be destroyed from without unless it is already being destroyed from within."

Make your own assumptions. Just realize that the US is nowhere nearly as powerful as you might think it is. We have outdated Cold War military equipment. Our economy is collapsing.

China and Japan are technically already richer than the US due to the US's $7 trillion deficit. If the US were to pay off this deficit, the US would rank anywhere from 3rd to 4th richest economy in terms of GDP (ranking below China and Japan respectively).

Be as patriotic as you want, it can only last so long...

yes i agree with you

ive been watching the news lately and the value of a dollar is going down steadily and if this keeps up we'd be the next roman empire

collapsing from within

Originally posted by CookieMonster000
yes i agree with you

ive been watching the news lately and the value of a dollar is going down steadily and if this keeps up we'd be the next roman empire

collapsing from within

The value of the dollar is dropping because the debt limit is increasing. This is the THIRD time the debt limit has increased since Bush has been in office. As soon as the economy dies there's two choices:

1) Wait for an outside military to conquer us. This military can even fight with Cold War equipment because that's all we have anyway. Not to mention we won't be able to fund a war pretty soon.
2) We can just face economic collapse and turn into a third world country, as was the case with Russia. I'm not sure if Russia's third world or not, but I sure wouldn't want to live there anyway...

maybe bush was hired by some country to start a war to increase debts and 15 years from now the US will be part of some other country

The US is the key to the global economy. If the US goes down, everything falls down with it. The rest of the world isn't going to let the US economy go down and will happily keep providing the $$$ to make sure this doesn't happen.

If the US reforms it's military, social security and also it's budget it will be fine

thanks,
drfunk

That is absolute rubbish. The US exports almost nothing these days, when America goes down into a depression it will hardly raise a ripple anywhere else.

It certainly will hurt Japan and China to some extent but only for a short time, because the American market for manufactured goods will dry up. But just remember, China also sell to other customers worldwide, and so does Japan.

There are almost seven billion people in the whole world, figure out for yourself what proportion of that seven billion live in USA. So as far as the world economy goes America is small potatoes.

You might be surprised to learn that the price of oil has not actually risen much in the rest of the world. The oil price is not rising, the US dollar is sinking. So it is only really more expensive if you have US dollars to pay for it.

In Australia the gasoline price varies from day to day, but in round figures has increased only about ten percent, or maybe a bit less since a year ago. In Euros it has hardly changed at all.

When the Asian currency collapse occurred in 1997, it never touched America at all. When the Russians defaulted on their debt, that did not effect America either. When America goes down, the rest of the world will not even notice.

I think the US economy may be slightly irrelevant to this anyway. All of the accounts i've read are predicting growth of 7% for china until 2020 and growth for the US of about 3%. If the US economy were to fall to, say, 0% growth, the chinese economy should still see some growth in the 1-3% range. With their population advantage it would seem that their economy will eventually overtake the US as they modernise. Whether or not they have the capability to overtake militarily is doubtful, but not impossible. Think that's a realistic scenario?

Yes.

I agree we are being destroyed from with in, both economic and coruption. But more to the point, when we do collaps, what will beacome of us?

Warpspeed you do not know what you are talking about. Imports/Exports only show the trace of goods into and out of countries. While the US doesn't do as much of this as it use to there is one big thing the US economy has more of than anyone else : Capital. The US has massive multinationals that account for a huge amount of the global economy and a sizeable chunk of the top 500 companies in the world are US.

The US, like most Western economies has been shifting from an economy with a sizeable manufacturing sector to a goods & services economy. The US sells ideas and brands. The US owns a lot of things.

The US is the worlds largest marketplace every other half-decent industrialized and developing nation sells goods to America. America is a consumer society. If the American economy collapses, a lot of American loans are going to be demanded repayed, inflation will hit through the roof, corporations will go under, people will lose jobs and will be able to consume less.

Your examples of what happens to the US economy is shortsighted because the 1990s was a huge global economic boom with the US having massive growth rates. Downturns in the Asian economy had effect, but was only a bump in the US growth rate.

The Australian economy was fairly insulated during the Asian financial crisis due to low value dollar promoting business in australia, low interest rates and an economic boom that continues to this day.

The US accounts for approx. 36% of the global economy. To say that it would have little effect on the world is ridiculous.

thanks,
drfunk

[edit on 23-10-2004 by drfunk]

[edit on 23-10-2004 by drfunk]

Yes, but with other countries (India, China etc) industrialising and growing at an ever greater rate, the US proportion of the global economy will begin to decrease. A US collapse now would certainly hurt the global economy, but in 10, maybe 15 years? Not so much I think.

the US economy is still growing and even in 15 or 20 years it will still be a force. 7% or 8% for India is much less in percentage points for the US economy, remember this factor.

thanks,
drfunk

Well, the US economy will certainly still be a force, but it won't be the over-arching dominant force it is now. The US economy is growing at 3%, if china keeps up it's growth at 7%, it will overtake the US by around 2018, if they keep up the 9% growth they have now, they will overtake in 2012. I don't really get your point about india's 7% growth being less 'in percentage points'.

because the US economy is larger, it's GDP is larger than those of India or China's a 3% percentage growth in real world terms is about $330 billion while for instance for China would be about $180 billion according to your facts.

If China maintains it's massive economic growth it will catch up to the US but it will take a long time.

Though China's GDP is 6 trillion, it's GNI (Gross National Income) is only 1.13 trillion, which pales to the United State's 9.78 trillion.

thanks,
drfunk

given china's population and current reform schedule it is innevitable that it will surpase the US...

the millitary will take longer, but the gap is a lot shorter than most people (want to) believe.

Essentially we are looking at a bi-polar world in the near future... possibly becoming multi-polar with India, Russian and the EU respectively

yeah, i was thinking about the EU, they have a GDP that's pretty close to the US but radically different policies on government expenditure. I really can't see most of the european countries spending enough on their military for them to attain superpower status. The only thing I can think that might change the situation is if OPEC starts pricing oil in euros, that would give the euro countries a shot in the arm and the dollar would plunge.

Talking of china, how advanced do you think they are in military terms? They seem to import a lot of their techs.