Much of the Chinese population is still comprised of peasant farmers. They have a long way to go to catch up with the US in that regard.

US is at top in nominal whereas China is at top in PPP since 2014 after overtaking US. Both country together share 40.75% and 34.27% of total world's GDP in nominal and PPP terms, respectively in 2019. GDP of both country is higher than 3rd ranked country Japan (nominal) and India (PPP) by a huge margin. Therefore, only these two are in competition to become first.

Both the IMF and the World Bank now rate China as the world’s largest economy based on Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), a measure that adjusts countries’ GDPs for differences in prices. In simple terms, this means that because your money stretches further in China than it would in the US, China’s GDP is adjusted upwards.

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The two nations are on an even keel when it comes to exports. However, the US has a trade deficit – it imports more than it exports – while China imports significantly less than it exports, resulting in a trade surplus.

They're using facial recognition to arrest protesters in Hong Kong - so clearly they will abuse A.I. as new tools emerge.

They don't have the privacy concerns that people in the U.S. have.

They also don't seem to have the concerns about abusive government that we have in the west. Odd, considering Mao Zedong killed over 25 million people just a couple of generations ago.

In the US, we started a revolution over a tea tax.

Well put! There is something strange about that.

It's clear to me that it is simply that the Chinese government relentlessly controls the media and prevents most Chinese people from even being aware of the abuses of the past.

The average chinese person doesn't care. They are just happy with an economy growing at 7 percent and see the government as responsible for that.

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In some ways it already has.

We will see but it ain't looking to good.

The US is definitely helping make this happening by pulling out of the trans-pacific partnership. That was created as part of a carefully designed strategy to counter the rise of China.

Trump ended it probably because he didn't understand it and didn't want to do any reading about it.

He just slapped trade tariffs on them because he thought it would make him look tough. That's way easier and more fun than reading a policy brief about the TPP.

He was already criticizing the TPP during the campaign. There is no way he had anyone who knows anything about foreign affairs advising him then. He probably just opposed it because Obama was for it.

That is absolutely what happened. It's just terrible.

Not just the TPP, everything. He doesn't care what is true. He just wants to get through the day with out learning anything.