Perhaps I am.
But there are certain things that irritate me almost instantly.
One example is when I read an article — usually
in the South China Morning Post — and the journalist feels compelled to
introduce China as: “the world’s second-largest economy.”
Why is that qualification necessary every bloody time China is mentioned?
China did not become the world’s second-largest economy yesterday. It is hardly breaking news. The phrase has long since become a stale, tiresome tagline, endlessly regurgitated by writers who seem determined to keep reminding readers that China is still “second” — invariably to the United States.
There is a Chinese expression, 画蛇添足 — having drawn a perfectly good snake, you decide to add legs to it.
That is precisely how I feel.
China is China. If the subject is its economy, by all means give us the relevant figures. But why this almost ritualistic need to remind readers that it is “second”?
Second to whom?
Of course, we know the answer: the United States of America.
To me, this constant ranking reflects something much deeper than innocent description. Either the writer has stopped thinking and is merely repeating a journalistic cliché, or he remains intellectually trapped in a world in which the United States must somehow occupy the top position and everybody else has to be ranked beneath it.
What amazes me further is that quite often the writer has a Chinese name!
Perhaps this is what my friend means when he says I am paranoid.
So be it.
But I see the same habit everywhere.
The United States is routinely described
as “the world’s largest economy”, “the richest country in the world”, “the
world’s most powerful military”, “the leader of the free world”, and who knows
what else.
My question is very simple:
What do these labels actually mean today?
Largest by What Measure?
Yes, measured in nominal US dollars, the United States remains the world’s largest economy. No argument there.
But economics is not a beauty contest in which one number settles everything.
Measured by purchasing-power parity —
which attempts to compare what money can actually buy inside different
economies — China has already been larger for years. World Bank figures for
2025 put China’s economy at roughly US$41.3 trillion in PPP terms, compared
with about US$30.8 trillion for the United States. Yet in nominal-dollar terms,
the United States was still substantially larger: about US$30.8 trillion
against China’s US$19.5 trillion.
So which country has the “larger economy”?
The answer depends on what you are
trying to measure.
That is precisely my point.
Repeating “the world’s second-largest
economy” as though the issue were settled by a single nominal-dollar league
table is intellectually lazy.
More importantly, what matters to me is not merely the size of an economy on paper but what that economy can actually do.
Can it build?
Can it manufacture?
Can it provide infrastructure?
Can it produce the machines, ships, power plants, batteries, vehicles, electronics, chemicals, steel and industrial equipment upon which a modern civilisation depends?
Can it mobilise resources when necessary?
Can it educate enough engineers and scientists?
Can it sustain its population without living indefinitely on borrowed money?
These questions tell me far more than a nominal GDP ranking.
Superficially, the United States remains extraordinarily wealthy. Nobody needs to deny that. It has some of the richest individuals and corporations humanity has ever produced. Wall Street can move trillions of dollars around the world. American technology companies command astonishing valuations. The dollar still occupies a privileged position in international finance.
But financial wealth and productive capability are not the same thing.
America has spent decades shifting production abroad while congratulating itself on becoming a sophisticated “service economy”.
China did almost the opposite.
It built factories.
It built ports.
It built roads.
It built high-speed rail.
It built power stations.
It built supply chains.
It trained engineers.
It accumulated industrial capability on a scale the world had never seen.
China has remained the world's largest
manufacturer for many years. In 2025, Chinese manufacturing output grew by 6.8%; US manufacturing grew by about 1%.
So, I would no longer say America “produces nothing”. It plainly does, and still on a huge scale. But the direction of travel is what interests me.
For decades, America allowed large parts of its industrial ecosystem to migrate overseas, while China methodically accumulated one industrial capability after another.
And now Washington suddenly discovers “industrial policy”.
Now it talks about reshoring.
Now it worries about shipbuilding.
Now it worries about semiconductors.
Now it worries about batteries, rare earths, pharmaceuticals, machine tools and supply-chain security.
Why?
Because at long last it has realised that you cannot run an economy forever on financial engineering, asset inflation, consumption and somebody else’s factories.
The phrase “richest country in the world” also deserves examination.
Rich for whom?
America undoubtedly contains enormous private wealth.
But it also contains enormous insecurity.
The Federal Reserve reported this year that 37% of American adults could not meet an unexpected US$400 expense entirely from cash, savings or a credit card paid off immediately. Thirty percent said they could not cover three months of expenses by any means if their main income disappeared.
That is not destitution.
But neither is it the picture normally conjured up by the phrase “the richest country in the world”.
Then look at homelessness.
According to the US government itself, 745,652 people were homeless on a single night in January 2025, including more than 266,000 living unsheltered.
Anyone who has walked through parts of Los Angeles, San Francisco and several other American cities does not need a lecture from an economist to understand that something is seriously wrong.
And now the US federal debt has passed US$40 trillion.
Forty trillion!
Not forty billion.
Not four trillion.
Forty trillion dollars!
And borrowing costs are also rising!
Yet we continue to hear the same majestic descriptions:
“The wealthiest country.”
“The largest economy.”
“The indispensable nation.”
Perhaps.
But increasingly I ask: indispensable to whom, and for how long?
To me, an even more interesting question is not: Which is the largest economy?
It is: Which is now the most important economy in the world?
That is not necessarily the same thing.
If China suddenly stopped manufacturing tomorrow, how many global supply chains would continue functioning normally?
How many factories elsewhere would discover that some component, chemical, machine, magnet, battery, solar module, electronic part or industrial input was no longer arriving?
How many countries would find their construction projects delayed?
How many manufacturers would suddenly discover how much of their supposed “domestic production” depended upon Chinese inputs?
That, to me, is economic importance.
China has become deeply embedded in the physical functioning of the world economy.
Yes, America still remains important in finance, technology, capital markets, aerospace, software and many advanced scientific fields.
But increasingly China sits at the centre of the industrial economy.
That distinction matters.
The same lazy ranking occurs with military power.
We are repeatedly told that America has “the most powerful military in the world”.
Again I ask:
Measured how?
Number of aircraft carriers?
Military expenditure?
Foreign bases?
Nuclear warheads?
Aircraft?
Satellites?
If warfare were simply a matter of adding equipment into an Excel spreadsheet, perhaps we could settle wars before firing a shot.
But modern warfare does not work that way.
What matters is the whole system: surveillance, satellites, drones, missiles, electronic warfare, cyber capability, industrial replenishment, logistics, command networks, air defence, anti-ship weapons and — above all — the ability to replace what gets destroyed.
China understands this.
It is not simply trying to build the same number of aircraft carriers as America.
Its military development has concentrated heavily on what strategists call anti-access and area denial — making it extraordinarily dangerous for an opposing navy or air force to operate near China. Even the US Department of Defense openly acknowledges the scale and speed with which China has developed these capabilities.
That is why counting aircraft carriers tells only a small part of the story.
And aircraft carriers themselves are hardly floating pieces of divine machinery.
Look at the recent saga of the USS Abraham Lincoln.
The mighty symbol of American naval power spent an extraordinary period continuously at sea. Reports emerged of food shortages, broken toilets, plumbing problems, water issues and serious stress among the crew. After 286 days of deployment, some 5,000 sailors finally reached Thailand for respite in early September.
Those toilet stories particularly amused me.
Here is supposedly one of the most formidable weapons ever created by mankind — nuclear-powered, carrying sophisticated combat aircraft and billions of dollars of equipment — and sailors are circulating videos of toilets they cannot properly use.
Perhaps warfare has indeed entered a new technological age: hypersonic missiles outside; clogged toilets inside!
Of course, broken toilets do not prove that an aircraft carrier cannot fight.
But they do provide a useful antidote to the almost religious awe with which American military hardware is sometimes discussed.
Machines are machines.
Ships are ships.
And sailors are human beings.
I constantly hear people declare confidently that America would defeat China in a war.
Really?
A war where?
Off California?
Or off China’s own coast?
Those are two completely different questions.
A conflict fought thousands of kilometres from the continental United States but close to China’s industrial base, missile forces and logistical infrastructure would be nothing like Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya.
I do not pretend to be a military strategist.
But I certainly would not accept the childish proposition that because America spends more money on defence and owns more carriers, victory over China must therefore follow.
Indeed, my own view is stronger than that.
I do not believe any outside force today can confidently expect to defeat China in a major conventional war fought on China's doorstep.
Anyone advocating a preventive war against China on the assumption that it would be quick, clean and victorious is, in my opinion, an idiot.
He may discover otherwise only after hundreds of thousands — perhaps millions — of people have paid for his stupidity.
And then there is Donald Trump.
I have said before that China could hardly have asked for a more helpful adversary.
Trump seems determined to accelerate many of the very trends that are weakening America’s international standing.
He quarrels with allies.
He threatens friends.
He imposes tariffs and then modifies them.
He announces one thing today and another tomorrow.
He treats diplomacy as though he were bargaining over the rent of a Manhattan shoplot.
And whenever markets force a retreat, somebody invents another explanation for why the retreat was actually a magnificent victory.
Hence the wonderful acronym: TACO — Trump Always Chickens Out.
Crude?
Certainly.
But Trump himself has hardly elevated the vocabulary of international diplomacy.
Meanwhile, Xi Jinping behaves almost exactly in the opposite manner.
Whether one likes Xi or not is irrelevant.
Watch his demeanour.
Measured.
Controlled.
Expressionless when necessary.
No shouting.
Rarely boasting about himself.
Rarely behaving as though every international negotiation were an episode of reality television.
The contrast fascinates me.
Trump throws tantrums.
Xi waits.
Trump talks.
Xi watches.
Trump wants everybody to know he is the strongest man in the room.
Xi seems perfectly content to allow time to demonstrate where the power lies.
That must be infuriating for Trump.
And we are about to see the contrast again.
Xi is expected in Washington on 24 September, offering the world another opportunity to observe the two men together.
Whatever agreements emerge from that meeting may matter less, in the longer sweep of history, than what the meeting symbolises.
One leader presides over a country desperately trying to preserve a primacy it has enjoyed for generations.
The other presides over a country that does not need to announce every morning that it is rising.
It simply continues building.
Perhaps my friend is right.
Perhaps I am paranoid whenever I see the phrase “the world’s second-largest economy”.
Perhaps I read too much into it.
But words reveal assumptions.
For decades, much of the Western commentariat — and, unfortunately, many Asians educated to think through Western eyes — has treated American primacy almost as a natural law.
America is No. 1.
Therefore, everybody else must be No. 2, No. 3 or No. 4.
I no longer accept that framework.
The world has changed.
Economic power is changing.
Industrial power has changed dramatically.
Technological power is becoming much more widely distributed.
Military assumptions that looked reasonable twenty years ago are increasingly questionable.
And the centre of gravity of the world economy is moving eastward whether Washington likes it or not.
The American political establishment — Democrats and Republicans alike — may rage against China.
Congress may pass resolution after resolution.
Think tanks may devise more sanctions.
Politicians may scream about “containing China”.
Military hawks may even fantasise about bombing it before it becomes too powerful.
But they cannot legislate history backwards.
Nor can Donald Trump tariff the twentieth century back into existence.
China has already crossed too many thresholds.
It is too large, too industrially complete, too technologically capable and too deeply connected with the rest of the world simply to be pushed back into the subordinate position that Washington would prefer.
So, the next time someone introduces China to me as: “the world’s second-largest economy…”
I shall probably still get irritated.
Call it paranoia if you like.
I prefer to call it refusing to look at the twenty-first century through twentieth-century American spectacles.
End
