Dispatch

The 10 American Ideas of the Decade

By Derek Thompson

9. “Chimerica” as a World Power

Image credit: Michael Christopher Brown

Forty-four percent of Americans think China is the world’s biggest economic power. Where’d they get that idea? Certainly not from facts. Even after growing at a 10 percent annual clip this decade, China’s economy is about a third as large as that of the United States. But maybe Americans are grading on a yield curve. As the U.S. fights off the recession by pouring money we don’t have into the economy, China owns $800 billion of U.S. debt, more than any foreign country. Some experts worry that America’s reliance on China could backfire if the Chinese begin a sell-off and drive up interest rates. But to run its job engine, China, the manufacturing juggernaut, needs America, the insatiable consumer, as much America needs China.

For better or worse, almost everything that matters to one of these two countries is affected by the performance and cooperation of the other. And when it comes to the environment, the world’s leading polluters will have to hold each others hands to reduce global emissions meaningfully. Today’s bipolar moment is not so much a cold war as a nervous dance between two actors who need one another more than they’d like to admit.