> The US now has an $18 trillion economy. China is nearing $11 trillion. That depends on how you measure it, and especially on how you convert Chinese currency

> The US now has an $18 trillion economy. China is nearing $11 trillion. That depends on how you measure it, and especially on how you convert Chinese currency, renminbi (RMB), into dollars so you can compare the two economies on the same quantifiable scale. There are two widely used methods with much different results for the size of China's economy: * $11 trillion: That number is yielded The "nominal" method, which is based on how many RMB you can buy with a dollar on international currency exchanges, such as if you did it at your bank (and they gave you a fair rate without exorbitant fees). * $19 trillion (already larger than the U.S. economy): That number is yielded by the purchasing power parity method (PPP), PPP calculates the RMB-to-dollar conversion based on how much it would cost to purchase the same set of goods locally in each country. (For example, if a gallon of milk cost 10 RMB in China and $1 in the U.S., the PPP conversion rate for milk would be 10/1. Needless to say, economy-wide PPP is far more complex.) Goods generally cost much less in China, a much poorer nation, so money goes further. Which method applies better to funding a military? I suppose it depends on to what degree transactions are local, such as paying troops and making military assets locally, and to what degree components and goods are purchased from other countries. Certainly China has large domestic military industry. Also, both numbers depend on how much you trust Chinese government economic statistics, which are widely suspected of being overstated. > That's not going to happen. China is replicating the Japan scenario. I've heard some say that, but nobody can predict these things with anything like the certainty in the comment above (which I'll take as hyperbole). China certainly has economic problems, and a government whose legitimacy was based on economic growth for 30 years. Now they are shifting back to ideology (communism and nationalism) and raw oppression.