U.S. Maintains Lead Over China in Multiple Measures of National Power

The United States exceeds China in total GDP, energy production, food exports, and military capabilities according to historical comparisons. China has four times the U.S. population yet produces about 60 percent of American GDP. The U.S. is the world's largest oil and gas producer and exporter while China imports 11 to 12 million barrels of oil daily.

The United States is also the largest food exporter in history. China imports nearly 40 percent of its food despite increases in agricultural productivity. U.S. nuclear forces are roughly six times larger than China's, and the U.S. operates 11 carrier strike groups compared with China's three conventionally powered carriers.

The United States has more than 100 years of experience in carrier warfare while China has less than 15. American companies and NASA have regained primacy in space exploration. In fields such as robotics, drones, artificial intelligence, nuclear fusion, cryptocurrencies, and bioengineering, the United States has reasserted its position.

China has spent over $4 trillion in the last decade on its Belt and Road initiative and military-industrial complex. Its effort to pull Latin America away from the United States has been failing. China lost its client in Venezuela along with discounted oil imports.

Past Rivalries In the 1930s, the U.S. Army ranked 19th in size worldwide.

By August 1945, the U.S. fleet and economy were larger than those of all the war's belligerents combined. Starting in the late 1940s, the Soviet Union was viewed as an unstoppable power. After the Soviet empire's collapse, Russia's GDP is now one-thirteenth the size of the U.S. economy.

Japan was expected to surpass the United States in the 1980s. Today Japan is mired in deflation while U.S. corporations exceed their Japanese counterparts. At the beginning of the millennium, the European Union was seen as the wave of the future. The Iran war showed the EU to be militarily weak and energy-short.

China's threat is not assessed by how fast it rose from prior weakness. What matters is whether its political structure, food and fuel capacity, military, and scientific innovation are on par with America's. So far China has not come close.