So apparently Americans see China as an economic threat. The past nearly 10 years has demonstrated rather effectively that Americans tend to be terrified of silly things while real scary shit has us mostly non-plussed (well, until it explodes a la housing bubble).
China is an economic threat like al qaeda is a legitimate military threat to us. China is insanely heavily dependent on us for their economic well being. We buy the crap they make. For China to become a real economic behemoth they would need to be buying our crap. Their growth is insane because they are so far beneath us in standard of living and they have a massive population. Slight improvements in their structure yield massive jumps in GDP.
For all the noise about how much of our debt they own, that is an investment. They buy our debt so we can subsidize our economy when it falters so we can buy their crap. If we end up in some form of contraction, China will be hit hard. Yes, they also trade with Europe, but the only market that could replace us is their own, but that would require more domestic disposable income, meaning higher prices to manufacture, which would mean higher prices and less exports internationally. If they ever stopped pegging their currency to ours that could happen and it would be good for them. It would also lead to (US) domestic goods being relatively more affordable to produce, so it would probably be good for us too.
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