As shocking as it may sound to those who know me well, I find it ludicrous to compare US and China, at all. It’s a question I get engaged in often – emotionally, I find myself unsurprisingly rooting for China on the sideline as a patriotic overseas Chinese. But rationally, I find this very notion to compare US and China an amusing one, perpetuated by what appears to me a rather insecure US mainstream media and their overconfident Chinese counterpart.
I am keen to elaborate why that is – not based on my personal experience having grown up in China and studied/ worked in the US extensively; but rather, arguments built on facts and figures, that US and Chinese mainstream media have either conveniently or deliberately chosen not to elaborate in the context of US vs China.
Let’s start with some hard macro economic figures.
With the US GDP at ~US$27.4 trillion vs Chinaβs at ~US$17.9 trillion in 2023, one can argue US is 1.5x over China. This narrowing GDP gap is one of the predominant arguments behind China being a threat to the US. But if we look at population, with China’s more than 4 times that of the US, US is effectively more than 6 times that of China on per capita GDP.
You’d think being a communist country, we’d have a more equal wealth distribution in China. Think again. The global metric to evaluate income gap – Gini coefficient – suggests in 2023 US at 0.43 vs China at 0.47. The higher the metric, the greater the wealth gap. This means the gap between the majority of the US and Chinese population are far greater than 6 times.
What does 6 times really mean? It might help to think more locally. If we look at our own income, would we ever compare ourselves with someone who’s earning >6 times more than we do today? Or, would we ever feel insecure or threatened by someone making more than 6 times less than we make?
Now, for the very fortunate top percentile of Chinese population (myself included) who are blessed with the knowledge and financial means to travel abroad, exposed to the homeless communities in San Francisco, and therefore somehow forming a different impression, I would urge to refer back to this simple figure of more than 6 times wealth gap at individual level between the US and China – It’s a simple and important starting point.
Why? Because this overwhelming monetary gap contributes to a majority of other strategic advantages the US has over China, e.g. military spending (US 3 to 4 times over China) and social welfare (the very reason that there is a homeless community in American cities is that you can survive as a homeless person in the US – that in itself suggests the generosity of the US social welfare system).
And another important strength this capital gap creates for the US is technological advantages.
We don’t even need to go deep on US leading sectors such as semiconductors, biotech and artificial intelligence, a simple example would sum it up – in the past, we used to compare Baidu vs Google. The difference between the two companies has grown to be so astronomical that nobody in their right minds would entertain that notion anymore.
Yes, China has a couple of tech companies that emerged in recent years as globally leading in their very specific domains, i.e. Huawei and Bytedance (i.e. the parent company of TikTok). And guess what, the US policymakers jumped on them like they would bring the end of US global dominance immediately. The damage by US sanctions has proven to be far greater than what China could ever impose on the US counterparts can cause – look no further than all-time-high FANG stocks vs how key China tech players are doing in the financial markets.
Now, let’s look at resources, cultural and geographical advantages – this is where God has truly blessed America.
One easy analogy in my mind is to compare the present US and China to the sons and daughters of two very different families.
The US was born into a wealthy and supportive family and brought up by the UK, who played an instrumental role in conditioning English as the defacto global language and experimented over many political systems before settling on the separation of powers that the US eventually adopted. In this example, if the UK were to be the father of the US, the rest of Western Europe would be the supportive relatives – aunts and uncles with substantial wealth and industrial patents and talents of their own π
And China was born into a rather poor imperialistic family, one that just survived a collectively-almost-an-hundred-year-span war imposed by America’s relatives and Japan. No aid (well technically some support by the Russians initially), no family capital to inherit, no talent to begin with, and practically illiterate with only the upper class of its society speak their own dialects of Chinese languages (for simplicity, one can think of the delta between some Chinese dialects as far apart as French and Greek).
The migration of European talents, capital and technological knowhow into the US and the Japanese invasion of China in WWII further widened the gap between the two.
So with this distinctively different family backdrops, the US grew up to become a well-educated startup founder with trust fund money and ample support from some of the most influential and business-and-politically-savvy families. Native in English, the US produces and exports music/ movies/ shows/ its idealism etc that connect at a global scale.
And just when everyone thought God couldn’t have blessed America more, it found some of the most valuable natural resources right in its backyard (though one could argue the originality of many of the States). It produces 80% of the world’s copper, >70% aluminum, and >50% of iron. It became the world’s largest oil producer and also produces 25% of the world’s natural gas that supports the Western European relatives today π
Though only ~2.4% bigger than China in size, the US has almost 2.5 times that of China’s cultivated land. It is entirely self-sufficient on food production and became the world’s largest food exporter.
And just when you start to real jealous of the US, hold your breath – it is also blessed with some of the most friendly neighbours in the world, Canadians to the north and Mexicans to the south. And guess what, that’s it! There’s nobody else!
China, however, grew up dirt poor – survived a famine and a brutal family civil war, busied with not getting into a full-blown war with a volatile neighbour (Russia) in the North for years, constrained by limited natural resources and insufficient landmass with 7% of the world’s arable land supporting 20% of the world’s population. Today, China is the world’s largest importer for energy and a number of key daily staple agricultural products including meat, dairy, soybeans and corn.
The Chinese is neighboured to 14 countries that are almost as complicated and diverse as global politics, including a restless North Korea to the North outside of Russia, a sibling who hates China (Taiwan) to the East, Vietnam and India to the South and Afghanistan to the West etc just to highlight a few.
Comparing US and China, therefore in my mind, is as almost crazy as comparing Bill Gates’ daughter with a semi-homeless orphan. Yes, both are technically humans but can they be more different in just about every aspect of their resources, upbringings and trajectories?
And most importantly – very different immigration policies and law enforcement, different costs of immigrations (higher cost to learn Mandarin vs English as a simple example) and different wealth distributions contributed to a widening gap in population growth.
A set of fresh figures would illustrate this point – In 2023, China produced 9 million babies. From 2021 to 2023, there were a total of >14.7 million new illegal immigrants to the US. The reality is there would be a lot more illegal immigrants than what’s been publicly disclosed by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services. And we are talking only a segment of new labour and consumer fuelling the US economy.
Of course, experts would expand further on US dollar dominance and its ability to therefore transfer inflation costs and easy credits that fund American’s lifestyles to economies globally etc. They might also expand on the good fortune US had at the timing of the WWI and WWII etc.
I don’t have the expertise to remotely attempt further, but if you are still with me at this point of the post, it’d hopefully become as clear to you, that –
- The US was destined to become a world dominant superpower, blessed with all the ingredients necessary.
- The gap between the US and China is more astronomical than what the mainstream media promotes, by almost every dimension.
- And the very notion to compare US with China, to me, is a huge privilege and a testimony to what China has accomplished with what little it was born into to begin with.
I am incredibly proud of being a Chinese and how hard its people has worked to lift themselves out of poverty. It’s also beyond me why China would be a considered a threat or a rival to the United States.
Yes, that orphan born homeless-ish had worked really hard, learnt to speak English, picked up the rules of capitalism and played the free market game hard and well (I know there are arguments around fair trade, but look no further than the lack of intellectual property protection and the way US encouraged “copying” of its Western European counterparts pre-Lincoln administration) for 40 years; slowly built up a competitive advantage (i.e. manufacturing capacity), a meaningful savings in USD (i.e. national reserve) and a global reputation.
But why would the daughter of Bill Gates ever feel threatened or challenged, with the need to react and jump on every single success the orphan had managed?
Instead of the opening picture, this whole comparison between the US and China looks a lot more like the following image in my mind π
As a resident on this planet earth, I do appreciate American exceptionalism. Because I do believe the world could use a leader who’s open-minded and empathetic, who’s generous and thoughtful, who leads by example and who moves humanity forward.
By all metrics and dimensions, the United States is the only country on this planet with the resources and means to play that role. A US that’s not paranoid, not insecure and not close-minded, would lead our world to focus on issues that matter. It would focus our attention and resources on how to tackle AGI collectively, on how to cure cancers, on slowing down aging, on building multi-planetary infrastructure, on protecting our planet earth from environmental degradation etc.
I hope that the US will grow to become the leader the world desperately needs. And I also wish the world will see a China that reciprocates and become more integrated in an ever more open world.
(As always, feedback and comments are adored.)
8 responses to “Why the US has been and will continue winning over China?”
The picture of the rabbit and the eagle encapsulates it all! Did you illustrated that yourself? Too cute π° π¦
Again, another eloquently written submission my dear! As always looking forward to your next one.
xx
Thank you babe! You warm my heart as always! These were done by GPT model π
Interesting perspective by you backed up with some data! Always excited to read your writings!
Keep on writing!
And btw, did you draw the ilustration by yourself?
Thank you William! All illustration credits go to GPT models π
Insightful read with lots of good data points to support your thoughts Demi. I too do think that there is quite a bit of over-generalisation in mainstream media around the comparison between China and the US and the paranoia that US has around China tech and industrial companies.
Keep up the writings and looking forward to your next piece!
Thank you Jerry! :))
Great read Demi, insightful and well written.
Thank you dear!