One American view of China — now increasingly popular on the left and the right alike, especially among the hate-Donald-Trump crowd — is that the communist colossus will be forever ascendant with continued astonishing levels of food production, ship construction and industrial output. In this pessimistic view, China will soon replace the U.S. as the world’s predominant power. We are, supposedly, like an exhausted British Empire circa 1945 and China is the new version of the postwar American powerhouse.

Yet even Beijing’s miraculous 30-year leap out of poverty into first-world affluence and westernized power is hardly the same as parity with the U.S. In truth, Trump held almost all the cards at the current summit and will do so again when Xi Jinping visits the U.S. this fall. According to nearly every historical measure of power, the U.S. leads China by sizable margins — in wealth, economic output, fuel, food and military strength.

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China has roughly four times the population of the U.S., but produces only about 60% of our total GDP. A crude way of looking at this asymmetry is that one U.S. citizen accounts for 40% more goods and services than his four Chinese counterparts. Americans enjoy a per capita GDP (roughly $95,000) more than six times higher than China’s (roughly $15,000).

We are the largest oil and gas producer and exporter in history; China must import 11 to 12 million barrels of oil every day. The U.S. is also the greatest food exporter in history; China, for all its miraculous increases in agricultural productivity, still must import 30-40% of its food, a number that keeps rising as China becomes more affluent and more diverse in its food consumption.

The U.S. still spends almost three times as much on defense. Its nuclear forces are roughly six times larger and its 11 carrier strike groups are nearly four times more numerous than China’s three conventionally powered carriers. The U.S. has more than 100 years of experience in carrier warfare; China has less than 15 years.

Americans enjoy huge technological advantage

American universities’ science, technology, engineering and mathematics departments dominate global rankings. In terms of market capitalization, eight U.S. companies are in the world’s top 10. American companies, along with NASA, have regained prior American primacy in space exploration. In new frontiers such as robotics, drones, artificial intelligence, nuclear fusion, cryptocurrencies and bioengineering, a once sluggish U.S. has woken up, rebounded and is reasserting its preeminence.

True, the U.S. fertility rate is down to 1.7. But China’s is 1.0 and its population is rapidly shrinking and aging.

But most importantly, China is an autocracy. It is superficially efficient, but its technology is........

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