Which nation is at the forefront of economic supremacy?
Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size Over the next decade, the trajectories of the worlds two largest economies will collide. One of them is the worlds dominant technological, financial and cultural superpower for a century. The other is a manufacturing titan, home to the worlds largest population and increasingly its most innovative industries. China is on track to become the worlds largest economy by 2028. It has already overtaken the United States as the largest trading partner of most of its major allies and continues Washingtons dominance over multilateral institutions. , including the World Trade Organization, and finance weight of the US dollar. As China moves closer to the center of the world stage, it has the ability and responsibility to play a greater role in world affairs and, together with other countries, to contribute more to solving the problems of the whole world. humanity, Chinese President Xi Jinping told his senior politicians on June 2. In his first speech as US president, Joe Biden said the two countries were in fierce competition. Competed with China and other countries to win the 21st century, Biden said. Xi, Biden added, was very serious about China becoming the biggest and most consistent nation in the world. In June, six months after taking office, Biden passed a $ 323 billion bill through the Senate in an attempt to re-energize U.S. industry to compete with a burgeoning Chinese economic machine. Xi has spent the past eight years consolidating his grip on the Chinese Communist Party, fueling Chinas economic development brand and its more strident nationalist tone. The struggle for economic domination is not only about trade balances or gross domestic product, but also about fundamentally different ways of running the economy. By the end of this decade, Xis China will become the first socialist economy in the world to match the market strength of the largest player in capitalism. There is now more Global Fortune 500 Companies based in mainland China and Hong Kong than in the United States. Americas Walmart remains at the top of the list, but is followed by three of the Chinese state-backed conglomerates: Sinopec, State Grid and China National Petroleum. No Chinese company was on the list in 1990. Beijing now has more billionaires than any other city in the world. He beat New York for the first time this year with 100 billionaires against 99 in New York, according to Forbes. Nationally, 698 Chinese billionaires are quickly catching up to the United States at 724. But when that gross number is divided by population, it also reveals how far China has to go to catch up with the United States in per capita terms. The United States has 1.86 billionaires per million people, China only 0.27. Loading Chinas population of 1.4 billion eclipses the 330 million in the United States, making any like-for-like comparison tricky. Chinas gross domestic product, which measures an economys total output, will exceed that of the United States by 2028, according to International Monetary Fund figures analyzed by financial services firm Nomura. At this point, both economies will be heading towards the $ 30 trillion ($ 39 trillion) mark. That timeline could be shortened to 2026 if Chinas post-COVID recovery continues to accelerate ahead of the United States. In Beijing, where COVID-19 was suppressed a few months after the first outbreak in the center of the country, big economic figures, which are often treated with suspicion, are anecdotally underpinned by the street-level buzz. Take-out stores see food sales up 30%, and 40 billion packages were delivered in the first five months of 2021, two months ahead of last years record, as consumers stranded at home spent a lot in the Chinese online shopping market of $ 2.4 billion. I arrive at work around 7 a.m. and leave around 9 p.m., said Shi Hailong, 31, a logistics courier for JD. It is very exhausting work. But the more you work, the more you get paid. I have two children and the oldest is going to primary school this year. I need to earn enough money for their education. Logistics courier JD Shi Hailong at work late at night in Beijing in June. Credit:Sanghee Liu If China becomes the worlds largest economy, it will be on the backs of workers like Shi. This milestone will trigger a series of geopolitical consequences. The International Monetary Fund, for example, is bound by its statutes to base its head office in the worlds largest economy. One of the pillars of the global economic and financial order could move from Washington to Beijing. But Chinas GDP per capita, which measures the size of the economy divided by population, will remain well below that of the United States for decades to come. Once adjusted for purchasing power parity, the value of a currency relative to the cost of goods will only reach $ 25,300 by 2025, compared to $ 76,500 for the United States, according to figures from the IMF. The difference between the per capita output figures and the total output effectively allows China to argue that it is a developing economy, getting concessions on trade policy and carbon emissions, as it becomes the worlds largest economy. largest economy in the world. By 2035, the Chinese Communist Party wants GDP per capita to reach the level of moderately developed countries. By 2049  the centenary of the founding of the Peoples Republic of China  Xi wants Chinas standard of living to match that of the West. To do this, China has made sweeping socio-economic changes, including implementing a three-child policy to reverse the aging process. Loading It is also using infrastructure projects under the Belt and Road Initiative to exert influence throughout the Indo-Pacific and provide contracts to its companies overseas, at the same time. as he tells its inhabitants to produce and consume at home through its internal distribution strategy. To boost domestic production and consumption, it has injected subsidies into sectors where it believes it needs to become more competitive, such as semiconductors. U.S. officials say it has also targeted intellectual property to gain an edge over its competitors in a brutal tech race. In February 2020, FBI Director Chris Wray said 1,000 investigations were open into Chinese technology theft, many of which targeted US electric vehicle and aircraft technology. Aware that his position as the worlds economic leader is under threat after his economy was rocked by COVID-19, Biden announced a $ 2.5 trillion stimulus package in January. It has since followed through on a $ 323 billion program specifically aimed at competing with China in research, education, technology transfer, intellectual property and manufacturing. Of that amount, $ 83 billion over five years will be spent to boost domestic semiconductor manufacturing in the United States. An additional $ 103 billion will be spent on research in biotechnology, artificial intelligence and robotics. I see strong competition with China, Biden said in January. China has a global goal and I am not criticizing them for that goal, but they have an overall goal of becoming the leading country in the world, the richest country in the world, and the most powerful country in the world. This will not happen under my watch, as the United States will continue to grow and expand.