There is no shortage of doomsday prophecies in the wake of Donald Trump’s visit to Beijing. We read that the United States is about to surrender its global leadership role to China, and that the country risks going down the drain. But is that really the case?
Donald Trump’s poor leadership has undoubtedly weakened the United States. But Trump is — we must hope — a temporary phenomenon. For that reason, the rumour of the superpower’s imminent death may be greatly exaggerated. Moreover, facts and figures indicate that the United States still has considerable strength in reserve.China is unquestionably making great progress in most areas. But the overall picture is that the United States will remain larger than China in the coming decade, economically as well as militarily.
Let us start with the economy.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates America’s nominal GDP at around 32.4 trillion dollars, compared with China’s 20.9 trillion dollars. In 2030, US GDP is expected to be around 37.7 trillion dollars, while China’s is projected at 26.0 trillion dollars. China’s economy would then be about 69 per cent the size of America’s, compared with 64 per cent this year. In other words, it will be moving closer to the American economy, but will still lag far behind.
The important word here is nominal. Nominal GDP is measured in current dollars and is strongly affected by exchange rates, price levels and inflation. China is still growing faster than the United States, but a shrinking population, a property crisis, debt, lower productivity growth and political uncertainty mean that the gap will not necessarily narrow quickly in dollar terms. There are many indications that China’s growth this year will fall towards 4.0 per cent. That is solid, but far from the high growth rates the country long enjoyed.
Measured in purchasing power parity, or PPP, the picture is different. By that measure, China is already larger than the United States. But PPP says more about domestic purchasing power and production volume. Nominal GDP tells us more about global economic weight, financial power, currency strength and market size measured in dollars. For corporate valuations, military budgets and international finance, it is therefore the nominal figures that matter most.
The tentative conclusion is that China’s GDP is unlikely to overtake America’s before 2030 — and perhaps not until much later. Goldman Sachs has previously estimated that China may overtake the United States around 2035, while more recent forecasts from CEBR, a British consultancy, suggest that the crossover may not happen until around 2045.
Much of the uncertainty is due to China’s bleak demography. According to the UN’s medium scenario, the country could lose between 100 and 120 million people over the next 20 years. If birth rates remain extremely low, the decline could be even greater. China’s total fertility rate is now around one child per woman, far below the replacement level of 2.1.
An equally important indicator is the age structure. In the coming years, China will have far more elderly people and far fewer people of working age. The median age is projected to rise from 40.6 years in 2026 to 50.6 years in 2045 — and to 52.1 years in 2050. Over the same period, America’s population will rise from 349 million to 376 million, and its median age will remain significantly lower than China’s.
“The foundation of national power is human manpower,” says Nicholas Eberstadt, a demographer at the American Enterprise Institute. He is far from certain that China will be able to challenge America’s global leadership position.
Militarily, too, the gap between China and the United States is narrowing, but the road to parity is long. In recent years, China has invested heavily in modernising its armed forces, but its spending — and its overall strength — still lag far behind America’s. China’s defence budget this year is around 275 billion dollars, compared with America’s nearly 1,000 billion dollars. If we take account of China’s presumed “hidden items”, the gap is somewhat smaller.
But the dollar amounts do not tell the whole story. China gets more out of its spending because wages are lower, and because weapons production largely takes place at home. Moreover, China is concentrating its military build-up in its immediate neighbourhood: the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, the East China Sea and the western Pacific. The United States, by contrast, must distribute its power globally. This means that China may become America’s equal regionally, but not globally in the foreseeable future.
The Pentagon is nevertheless concerned about China’s rapid advances in key military fields. The country already has the world’s largest navy measured by number of ships, although the United States still has more aircraft carriers, better nuclear submarines and more bases around the world. China’s great advantage is its shipyard capacity, which enables it to build ships at a pace the United States cannot match.
China is also developing its nuclear arsenal at great speed and may, according to experts, have at least 1,000 operational nuclear warheads by 2030. The United States and Russia will still have far larger arsenals, but China’s growth means that, for the first time, the United States must deal with two major nuclear rivals at once.
At the same time, China is developing new missiles and hypersonic weapons that could make it risky for the US Navy to operate close to Taiwan. We must also take into account Beijing’s heavy investment in anti-satellite weapons, artificial intelligence and cyber warfare.
The conclusion is that the United States still has major advantages. It has the world’s most experienced military power, eleven aircraft carriers of the largest type, an enormous network of bases, advanced logistics and intelligence — and not least, allies. Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines, Britain, the NATO countries and other partners mean that the United States does not stand alone. China, for its part, has few military allies.
Knowledge, research and intellectual capital are a third measure. Here too, China is advancing rapidly in certain fields, but the United States is likely to retain its broad leadership position for a long time to come. In the Times Higher Education 2026 ranking, China’s Tsinghua University is in 12th place and Peking University in 13th. The top ten are still dominated by the United States and Britain. America’s lead lies not only in its universities, but in the entire ecosystem around them, shaped by major technology companies, open academic communities, the immigration of talent and, not least, freedom of thought.
That is why a red warning light will flash if Trump weakens this advantage. As a group of American university leaders put it in a joint statement some time ago: “We speak with one voice against the political interference now threatening American higher education.”
Regardless of Trump, the United States continues to invest heavily in artificial intelligence. Private investment in American AI is many times greater than in China. According to a recent report from Stanford University, US private investment in 2025 was around 286 billion dollars, compared with 12.4 billion in China. But China is probably spending far more on AI than the open figures suggest, because much of the effort takes place through state and semi-state channels.
That is how the picture looks. But as Benjamin Franklin said 300 years ago: “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”
