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Comment by da_big_ghey | Hacker News Reader

America is still the world's largest economy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...

Nominal GDP is not the best measure for comparing industrial products, especially ones that go into products sold to and used by consumers. In PPP GDP terms, the Chinese economy is larger and PPP GDP is a better measure of how consumers and industrial customers will influence technology development.

The question of nominal versus PPP GDP is a bit complicated, but a basic rule of thumb is that nominal GDP is better if you're measuring trade (since the nominal rate is the actual value you'll get during international exchange transactions), whereas PPP works better for individual cost-of-living or quality-of-life metrics.

For measuring gross economy size, I would go with nominal GDP.

I think that's missing the point of the parent comment. Being the largest doesn't really matter but if they were to put their money somewhere it wouldn't be x86.

China will overtake the US within the next 10 years, possibly in or even before 2025, depending on how well the US handles the COVID-19 aftermath.

That's not really interesting per sé.

Looking at the composition of the GDP China "accounted for 28 percent of global manufacturing output in 2018. That puts the country more than 10 percentage points ahead of the United States, which used to have the world's largest manufacturing sector until China overtook it in 2010."

Which is a serious bind on future growth.

There are also geopolitical issues that could radically change the equilibrium in the future.

For example

https://thediplomat.com/2020/12/would-china-invade-taiwan-fo...

> Which is a serious bind on future growth.

I'm not sure those the US’S comparative advantage shifting to finance and IT over manufacturing is a “serious bind on future growth”.

It a limitation of ability to avoid interdependence, but that's a different issue.

Hon Hai is the largest manufacturer of components in the World and it's Chinese (they make, for example, Apple components with the name of Foxconn)

TSMC is Chinese as well

They are in what we call Taiwan, but the status of Taiwan it's unclear and it's not officially a sovereign state, what would happen if the two China reunite under the same government?

China has also gained a big influence in Africa which is the fastest urbanizing region of the World and the second fastest region of the World for growth and it's on its way to become a 5 trillion economy

“Right now you could say that any big project in African cities that is higher than three floors or roads that are longer than three kilometers are most likely being built and engineered by the Chinese. It is ubiquitous” (source: Forbes)

They are playing the long game.

America will not recover until it re-introduces tariffs. This was the original mechanism by which America first industrialized (see Jeffersonianism) It would also benefit the Chinese people by forcing China to prioritize raising the welfare levels of their own consumers who are 2nd class citizens alongside manufacturer/exporters.

only for 7 more years: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/26/china-to-overt...

Give it time. It's the momentum and room to grow that matters...

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