Can't we all just be successful

Why does one country doing well have to mean the others are doomed?

Capitalism. One man's profit is, by very definition, another man's loss.

That said, America and China are both doing relatively well now, and if one's economy went up, so would the other's, since they are respectively the largest importers and exporters in the world.

For 2200 years, China has been such a large and diverse empire that it needs to be more concerned about internal integrity than expansionist ambition.

Sure, China will be one of the superpowers of the 21st century, but it will always be more interested in maintaining its own cohesion than in taking over the world.

Just relax and enjoy the cheap electronics.

Yes, China is rising. The west is doomed. It's time to accept the new Overlord. Capitulate now and maybe they grant you a fast painless death.

That's the view of 'realism,' and not really anything to do with capitalism. Lots of people who consider themselves capitalists will tell you that greater prosperity for all can be had by trading goods between countries which have a comparitive advantage in producing different goods.

For example, Canada has a comparitive advantage in producing raw materials thanks to all our land, while China has a comparitive advantage in processing those raw materials into goods thanks to their abundant labour. More goods can be made at a lower price by shipping our resources to be processed by their labour than could be made if Chinese labour only worked with Chinese resources and only Canadian labour worked with Canadian resources.

It may seem like it sometimes, but economics isn't actually a zero-sum game.

I was referring to the first part of his post with that comment.

As I said afterwards, by co-operating with trade and such, all countries can achieve growth for the near future. It's just that the downfall of America and the colonisation of the world by India and China seems to be a popular belief at the moment, never mind the fact that they both have ridiculously low GDP/capita, a low HDI, and one has a weak central government while the other has an authoritarian central government.

China (PRC) doesn't even have the second largest economy in the world. That's Japan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)

If you include Taiwan, China just about rises above Japan, which, when you consider that Japan has a tenth of the population, a tiny fraction of the area, and very few raw materials, and that this is still a third of the economy of the USA, isn't overly impressive.

China will grow and be a major player, but it still lacks a lot of major things from preventing it from being a USA-type superpower:

- GDP per capita is still terribly low. Yes, its rising, but its still about 1/5th of most any developed nation.

- Too many people competing for too few resources (China could not support 1 billion people with an American or European standard of living)

- Horribly inefficient/corrupt authoritarian government

- Export-driven economy (what happens when the US or other nations cannot afford to buy Chinese goods any more?)

China will be a major power - easily the 2nd most important in the world. But there are just too many things going against it. The same can be said for India. Honestly, I believe Brazil would be a bigger player in the future than China, given its much more favorable demographics.

No economy has indefinite growth.

Also much of Chinas economy still relies on cheap labour, as Chinas economy becomes larger the people will expect higher wages causing labour to become more expensive.

Well, if anyone of you could understand Chinese then you would see there are a lot of talks going on in China about changing the economic growth from Export-driven to Domestic-Driven and to build some world class brands. They ain't stupid and they know that the cheap labour thingy won't last.

And about the speed of their development... its like the PRC's GDP was only a quarter of Japan's in 2000, but they were almost equaled in 2009...

The west won't be doomed as China rising, when Chinese have more buying power they will buy more western made stuff, lots of western companies have found huge success in China, Like the Chinese already saved some American car companies' arse during the recession...