China can't help but outstrip the U.S. economically in terms of GDP and could potentially become the world's greatest super-power in due time. China now is the 4th largest economy in terms of GDP but off-set by a 99th ranking in percapita income. The only way for the U.S. to avoid ceding the no. 1 spot is that we grow our population and do things smarter. We are the third most populated nation now. The other factor that could hamper China is if they can maintain current political structure intact by solving their potential problems from their Tibetan, Inner Mongolian and the Muslim populations.

China is also experiencing inflated prices due to the cost of oil,....and if the USA is buying less Chinese goods, China's economy will also slow down greatly. China must import 100% of it's oil while USA has some of the largest yet untapped oil reserves in the world. It's not fair to compare a slowed US economy to a robust Chinese economy over such a long period of time.

We have allowed ourselves to be screwed royaly. Companies send jobs out of the country and also our own government is allowing our jobs to be taken by not cracking down on illegal aliens working in the U.S. They say no one wants to do the jobs illegals do, but in these times people need these jobs even more in order to support their families with all the layoffs and also as a 2nd job to cover the increases in the cost of living. It doesn't help that we ourselves buy the products made out of the U.S., but it is hard to find products that are here. As far as automakers go.....why can't our American carmakers make better and longer lasting autos? I think part of it is Unions, they started out a good thing for us, but have gotten out of hand. They "over protect" the employees by allowing people to slack off and not do their job. My husband was an old school Union employee for 28 years and he retired. Believed in a full days work for the company. It had gotten crazy....no one wants to work or learn things....and the Union let's them get away with it.

China's economy will continue to grow until the World gets smart and stops buying second rate goods and products or products that are harmful.I for one will continue to look for American made goods.China may also slow down when the pollution in their big cities bcomes so bad that they can't work or live in the city

support china always shop at walmart!

As long as this country gets 70% of its energy from other countries, we will forever be bankrupt. We need to DEMAND that Congress gets off its collective duffs and TAKE CARE OF BUSINESS. Nancy Pelosi is PERSONALLY blocking ALL energy bills until AFTER the fall elections. She REFUSES to allow any energy bills on the House of Representative floor and ALL Democrats refuse to sign referendums to force it to the floor. Too many people DO NOT KNOW that the Democrats ARE IN CONTROL of Congress!
WAKE UP AMERICA!!!

Like Phil Gramm said:

The U.S. has become a nation of whiners.

If you take a nation of 1 billion workers vs. a nation of 200 million or so partying spoiled whiners, who will produce more?

Just a generalization of course,, but think about it..

Eventually the U.S., Canada, Mexico & S. America will combine to offset the Chinese gargantuan..

China is still a peasant economy in most of it's nation and is dealing with out of control growth, massive environmental damage from pollution and soon to be civil unrest because of a growing middle class. "Chaina ain't all that"
See National Geographic for the true story of China.

Of course China will dominate. Our beloved (and I use the term jovially) has outsourced everything to China ... what did they expect? How stupid is our government anyway!! They asked for it, they've got it now. The US government doesn't have any room to complain about this one. Idiots. Blame the so-called New World Order people (and we all know who those are!).

The sad truth now comes home why we entered WWII. The high risk plunge in support of the Brits proved a lasting economy 60 years into the future. The broadly accepted parameters of a health of a Nation are wrong. With easy credit and lax regulations on land use, transportation, etc., we have become that overly consumptive economy with, daily, fewer inventive solutions to generate dollars into America. We should diminish non productive populations, concentrate residential growth only if substantiated by an economy and in urban cores, hopefully, having existent infrastructure. Diminishing entitlement programs and allowing our populations a natural death may avoid another World disaster-War.

Any company that moves their operations off American soil should be barred from any kind of NAFTA agreement and should be taxed to the begiba's to send their now "foreign" made products back to the American people. They should all be charged with tyrynanny, for they have turned their backs on their country. Here our plee's polititions!!!!

The travails of the airline industry is a warning to the zealots of the environmental movement and shortsighted politicians who cater to them by opposing coal , oil, and nuclear energy of what the economy of this country will be like in a few years.

I am not for tariffs because I want to punish China, I am for Tariffs because I want to protect Americans. This agreement we have with China is so lopsided we import $75 billion more than we export to them in only a four month period. They protect their economy, but we cannot protect ours? Another thing get rid of the WTO... Congress passes laws for America and our people...not, NAFTA, GATT, CAFTA, SPP the UN, or WTO.... We need to demand that Congress get us out of these hate America organizations...and start protecting ourselves from this type of deceptive garbage.

this is a no brainer! "empires" come and go. due to our "political instability," with every administration reinventing the economic wheel and laws the U.S. is ripe for picking as an economic disaster that is ready to happen. China has more than $1.5 Trillion worth of our money (IOU's). they have over 4 times the population, gaining influence throughout the world, NOT pissing governments off like ours does thus "winning over the hearts and minds" of populations the world over. we need to learn how to play in the sand box with everyone else and stop being the 'hood bully. WE ARE IN TRA-BOOO!

Unfortunately we are measuring everything in terms of money and economy. We need to measure how well our people are prepared to meet the challenge. The saying: when things get tough, tough get going does not seem to apply here because we are not tough enough to get going. By tough I do not mean strength in terms of muscle or power or money. By tough I mean how tough our educational system is preparing us.
Just to get back to a bit of history. We were strong and tough during the post war period. That is also the time when our eductional system had muscle; we were teaching what was relevant to living and growing. All knowledge was shared with the pubic and the public in turn not only took care of itself but also helped improve the quality of life by cooperating to eridicate polio, tuberculosis and a hoard of other diseases. Becaue the public was self sufficient, it took care of itself and also had hopes of helping the rest of the world because it just could. That is when programs like Peace Corps and the Good Ship Hope came along. Much of the useful knowledge, especially the knowledge of germs and disease was eventually taken out of the public sphere and relegated to specialty areas which the businesses took over making us all dependent on the "businesses" like the health insurance, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, medical testing labs all of which have now become multimillion dollar industries whose main interest is that the public remains ignorant and dependent. While this is happening in America, other countries are empowering their public by sharing with the public knowledge relevant to healthful living. Try watching Korean TV programs and comparing them with our US programs. Under these circumstances, if we are to win back our past glory, we need to make our public once again knowledgeable. Such a public, if it had relevant knowledge of health and disease, will get ill less often and if and when it does, will also get well faster. Health insurance can then be limited to major illnesses and the money not wasted on minor day to day ailments. With this sort of educated public we will also be able to cut down on medicare and medicaid expenses and the money saved can then be channeled to education where we need to do two things: One, keep businesses out of designing teaching material and two, let teachers do the designing and teaching. At the present time not only businesses but government agencies are all involved in designing teaching modules which are not cohesive enough to make any sense neither to the students not the teachers who are not able to see any relevance to real life needs in them. This trend started after Sputnick (the Russian satelite sent up in 1957 when America felt defeated) when in the zeal of catching up, we messed up an excellent educational system. Now the curriculum is so disjointed and out of control that a very important agency is pushing lessons about the advantages of under water logging to the eighth graders, which, by the way, meets National Science Standards. We have to do reform in education at that level. I strongly believe that we have to bring forwarcd the knowldge we left behind around mid fifties and early sixties. The only way to define our current curriculum is to visualise a ladder with the first six rungs missing. Who can use such a ladder to climb up the roof. Our current science curriculum has a gap of forty years. All the basic knowledge which was instrumental in getting us a goodly supply of Nobel Laureates is now gone. In many of our larger school system we have replaced basic science subjects with such areas as environmental science, earth science, space science and the like. No where we are teaching science skills. Many of our affluent schools do not even have good microscopes. No wonder we are getting low in creativity and versatility. Fix that void first and then see how productive and creative we can be. You have not seen nothing yet. Other countries are surpassing us because they have kept the continity of knowedge and kept it available to the public through the school system. We have let the businesses usurp it leaving our public, poor, ignorant and high and dry. It seems as if it is good for the business but how long a business can flourish without a strong and knowledgeable consumer base? Ignorant public has to be subsidized and that is what we are now doing and that is where all our wealth is going. We need to plug such holes by imparting life relevant education and skills. No one is thinking of doing this kind of education reform. A few of us in Chicago are setting up a Science Display and Demonstration Center where all science, not just bits and pieces of it, is displyed and demonstrated. We are doing this by sifting, sorting and condensing knowledge. Surprisingly, when we do that knowledge shrinks. Sciene for instance gets reduced to mere 150 simple concepts and skills that anyone can understand and do.
This center could be a protype for improving science education if anyone cared to know more about it.

You forgot that china acts as one country and not every person is a (FILL IN THE BLANK)american.

We have mexicans attacking us and using there money to live like kings in their country, un educated blacks who want everything and not working for it. throw in a couple of other non producing people and what do you get. a country of lawyers and a country of give me and whinners.

To paraphrase, 'one current foolish member suggests tariffs to offset currency manipulation.' I don't where to start with this author, because he clearly displays so little understanding of basic economic theory and history, so to render one virtually impotent to respond to his ignorance.

China offers only two advantages; cheap abundant easily exploitable labor, and the ability to pollute at will. While American jobs are lost, China grows, as does its thirst for oil, which in turn certainly does not push down the price of oil. I hope Mr. Barr can wrap his stagnant little mind around this point.

The United States grew and prospered very much so because of its unique geographic situation. That is, we have done well because there are two large bodies of water insulating us. This has been posited and discussed for years. Isolation is not a dirty word Mr. Barr.

Moreover, China's rise in no way compares with what took place here. Labor shortages created the need for long hours and innovation in 19th century America. Not so much the issue in modern China. Zero innovation, oh yes, but long hours.

Too bad we cannot offshore stupid writers.

Once again replacing oil is the key to our success in world trade. We need to be the nation in charge of energy that China desperately needs to compete globally. Use our technologies to develop and export the next generation of power. Since they have us on cheap labor, exploitation of it and manipulation of currency, we must find ways to provide them with energy that is cleaner, less expensive and renewable. This will be good for both nations and the rest of the world. Barack Obama is the President who will make this urgent policy. Yes, we can reduce our debt to China by reducing oil consumption and profits one barrel at a time until we don't need any oil for energy. This paradigm shift in investment, transportation, and production will be no less significant than the shift to synthetic rubber during WWII. We did that in less than four years and we can do this by adopting the same wartime posture of emergency, sacrifice and innovation. Barack Obama for President in 2008!

The U.S can do what ever it wants as far as trade goes and anyother treaty for that matter. We did it to the english spanish indians and french back in the day. The big rich business buddys of the politicians lobbyed for the free trade crap so they could move overseas and away from all the regulations, have slave labor with no benes, etc. If the us government really cared about this country they would take care of this country and the people that elected them.

Projections about China are nearly impossible to make. If those same prognosticators were to make the same projections about the US economy in a similar stage of development, I am sure they would have overshot too. The intangible unknowables are the following: How will China deal with the discrepancy between the rich and poor. How will they deal with rising health care costs that are sure to hit their economy with more smokers than any nation in the world by far. Will labor unions emerge in the face of communism and destroy innovation and drive wages up so that they can not compete with cheap labor from new emerging nations...The answers to these questions are yet to be seen. China may very well top the United States, but so far, the problems that have beset American businesses have not challenged China and how China deals with such challenges will determine how far they will go...