US underestimates China’s economic challenge at its own peril

The economy of the People’s Republic of China has been growing much faster than that of the United States for decades. So too has China’s average real wage.  China is now the world’s second superpower, catching up to the United States economically if not (yet) militarily. Its political influence grew alongside its gross domestic product. Where once the chief scapegoat for the US was the USSR/Russia, China has replaced the latter in that position. The global tourist industry courts Chinese big spenders.

China’s technical advances continue to amaze and impress most of the world. The basic story here replicates in large part the story of the United States and the British Empire. America was once a mere colony, humiliated as well as economically abused by its colonizer. China suffered similarly at the hands of its colonizing abusers, although it was able to avoid formal colonial status, except for some enclaves.

Resentment and bitterness accumulated in the American revolutionary break from its colonial status in the late 18th century. The same happened in China in the middle of the 20th.

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