http://www.marketplace.org/topics/world/paper-chinas-trade-s...
But doing so misses the point. Unlike internal metrics, which have been abused for centuries to give outsiders an impression of greater strength, trade metrics are much harder to "fake." You can, if you choose to, create fake businesses in countries around the world and have them report importing non-existent goods (and pay taxes and duties on those goods!) to give the appearance of a larger trade than you have, but at these magnitudes 3 - 4 trillion it just isn't feasible to fake any more.
So the real story isn't whether or not China is the worlds "largest" trader of goods, but that it is even arguable compared to the US economy is something of an "oh crap" moment in terms of global geo-politics.
Economies are power. If you have the largest economy you are the most powerful nation because if push came to shove, you can out produce a lesser economic power and win a war of attrition.
Going to be a very interesting century.
If that were true, China would be on similar footing to the US, militarily. But it's not. Not even close.
I'll grant that given equal military spending, China would catch up to the US eventually, but it would probably take a decade or three. That's a decade or three of equivalent military spending. And right now China isn't spending anywhere near the US rate.
That is seems like very long. Why would it take three decades?
The modern world isn't WWII, when you could just throw some aircraft up there and let them shoot it out. Modern aircraft combat amplifies even small differences in ability; a squadron of F-22's might shoot down a squadron of F-15's before the F-15's diagnostics and support could even spot them. I've read anonymous anecdotes of US vs UK wargames in which the last gen US fighters (pre-F22) would wipe out all of the UK aircraft before being detected. Anonymous anecdote, but still.
The US also has decades of anti-guided and anti-ballistic missile research and experience. Sure the pure technology can be copied quick, but deploying it to your sea fleet and again developing the proper doctrine and support systems for actually using the stuff takes time.
I'm not familiar with the Chinese submarine situation, but the US takes that area very seriously as well.
And the problem is that you've got to be strong on all three fronts. Losing largely on any one - surface ship, air combat, submarine - means that your entire fleet may be sent to the bottom of the sea in mere hours... or minutes.
Note that the Chinese military leaders understand this, and are focusing their efforts on asymmetric defensive warfare - at least as pertains the US. 'Carrier killer' missiles, sufficient numbers of cruise missiles to overwhelm US naval defenses, submarines. These are relatively cheap and enough to keep the US off China's back (indeed the US is rumored to be keeping all carriers far far away from Chinese coastlines due to the carrier killer) - but it's not enough to achieve anything like parity.
Of course I'm just an armchair guy on the internet. I don't have any inside knowledge, just what I've gathered in my reading.
Some out of context data pulled from Wikis etc:
"In January 2007, it was reported that the F-22... [amassed] a 144-to-zero kill ratio during "Northern Edge" air-to-air exercises held in Alaska, the first large-scale exercise in which the Raptor participated."
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"I can't see the [expletive deleted] thing," said RAAF Squadron Leader Stephen Chappell, exchange F-15 pilot in the 65th Aggressor Squadron. "It won't let me put a weapons system on it, even when I can see it visually through the canopy. [Flying against the F-22] annoys the hell out of me."
Lt. Col. Larry Bruce, 65th AS commander, admits flying against the Raptor is a very frustrating experience. Reluctantly, he admitted "it's humbling to fly against the F-22," - humbling, not only because of its stealth, but also its unmatched maneuverability and power.
http://www.acc.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123041831
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Edit: And found one of F22 v Eurofighters; both are GenV fighters:
Two other German officers, Col. Andreas Pfeiffer and Maj. Marco Gumbrecht, noted in the same report that the F-22′s capabilities are “overwhelming” when it comes to modern, long-range combat as the stealth fighter is designed to engage multiple enemies well-beyond the pilot’s natural field of vision – mostly while the F-22 is still out of the other plane’s range. Grumbrecht said that even if his planes did everything right, they weren’t able to get within 20 miles of the next-generation jets before being targeted.
“But as soon as you get to the merge…” Pfeiffer said, referring to the point at which fighters engage in close-up dog fighting, “in that area, at least, the Typhoon doesn’t necessarily have to fear the F-22 in all aspects… In the dogfight the Eurofighter is at least as capable as the F-22, with advantages in some aspects.”
http://wallacegsmith.wordpress.com/2012/07/31/the-f-22-rapto...
>I've read anonymous anecdotes of US vs UK wargames in which the last gen US fighters (pre-F22) would wipe out all of the UK aircraft before being detected.
Now the UK's bought into the F-35 and what a mess that's turning into.
0: http://www.theage.com.au/business/china/is-george-soros-bett...
We know for a fact that Starbucks, Google, etc perform accounting tricks to shift sales from the UK to Ireland.
In the end, doesn't this all trickery cancel each other out, meaning that the rankings are a fair reflection?
The article provides an estimate that 1/3rd of Chinese imports were from China itself. I have never heard any kind of claim of that magnitude leveled against the present United States.
The one point I'd like to add is that China incentivizes their companies to export through tax rebates and then incentivizes imports from HK through the absence of tariffs. The makes it profitable for companies to artificially boost exports. I have not seen similar mechanisms available in the US.
It's important to note that China does have a dual system of Governance within itself: Democracy (Hong Kong) + Communist control (Mainland). Thus it can, and does, leverage best of both worlds to doing business efficiently.
This also means that Hong Kong, for a city, is in a very strong position to grow up into a cutting edge city of future given the volumes it has to handle for mainland China.
China today is basically China, Inc. The people in charge of every aspect of the government are heavily motivated to manipulate this sort of data, just the same way as they try to cover up the pollution in their major cities. In contrast the economies and political systems in the US, Europe, etc. are far more open and not as easily vulnerable to this type of manipulation.
How about LIBOR rigging? Or traffic lane closures to spite political opponents? If anything you could argue manipulation in the US and Europe is far more sophisticated than China. For example, there's manipulation in plain sight: focus on the U-3 unemployment number rather than the U-6, never mention the labor participation rate where 92 million people in the US have given up looking for work.
And look at the news in the UK newspapers today:
The corruption of Britain: UK’s key institutions infiltrated by criminals
Secret report shows how organised crime infiltrated judicial system as well as police with prison service and HM Revenue & Customs also compromised.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/the-corruptio...
Yeah, there's corruption in the US/Europe/Japan et al, but that level of corruption is dwarfed by the deeply systemic corruption up to the highest levels in China and Russia, among other places. The fact is you can't even tell what China's GDP is within a factor of maybe +/- 50% due to that corruption.