“Study the past if you would define the future,” said the Chinese philosopher and reformer Confucius, and that may or may not be true in today’s fast-changing world, some of the data below may give you an aperture of what 2016 will look like between the number one and two economies. US and China may just be the perfect frenemy of enormous proportion.
In terms of GDP, US is still the largest with $17.41 trillion and China is the second-largest with $10.4 trillion, and larger than Japan and Germany combined. China is a minor when it comes to share of global military spending, a mere 12% as compared to 34% of the US;
President Barack Obama, right, and Chinese President Xi Jinping, second from right, wave along with, wives Peng Liyuan, left, and first lady Michelle Obama as they arrive for a state dinner at the White House in Washington, Friday, Sept. 25, 2015. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
nevertheless China holds more than $1.25 trillion of US treasury securities. US trade deficit with China is a whopping $306 billion despite US exports to China grew 459% during the last 12 month.Even though China is no longer the lowest-wage manufacturing country in the world, in 2015 productivity-adjusted hourly rate in China is $14.60 versus $23.50 in the US.
The Chinese currency yuan has fallen again as in January of 2015 the US dollar was worth 6.21 Chinese yuan and by mid-December, it was worth 6.48 yuan. However, Chinese consumption shows no sign of slowing down and Chinese tourists are number-one consumers in the world. US-China tourism has recorded over 25 million trips between the two nations at an average annual growth of 7.6% since the China-US Tourism Leadership Summit was established in 2007. Among that, the number of Chinese tourists traveling to the United States has grown at an annual rate of 18.4 percent. Over 2 million Chinese people came to America for travel last year, making China the fourth biggest source country traveling to the United States. 2016 will be the US-China Tourism year, as announced by President Obama and China President Xi Jinping earlier this year, the number of Chinese tourists will push close to 4 million!
US may have invented the Internet and online shopping, but China has been the e-commerce champion of the two since 2013. Alibaba, China’s leading eCommerce local champion, handles more e-commerce transactions than Amazon and eBay combined. Mobile commerce, which includes smartphones, tablets and mobile devices amounted to $180 billion last year, about 38% of all Chinese e-commerce. In 2016 it will reach $506 billion, more than 56% of all e-commerce transactions, according to eMarketer, a US research firm. The number of Chinese online shoppers is now 410 million, more than the entire US population. On November 11th, Alibaba’ s total value of goods transacted during its Singles’ Day shopping festival was $14.32 billion, more than US’s Cyber Monday and Black Friday combined.
US is known for our innovations, but China filed more patents and trademarks than the US. Last year innovators filed some 2.7 million patent applications to mark another worldwide annual rise, as application activity in China outstripped the combined total in its next-closest followers, the United States and Japan. Globally, patent offices receiving the highest number of applications in 2014 were China, with 928,177 filings, followed by the US with 578,802 filings. China also saw, by far, the highest trademark filing activity– with a class count of 2.22 million, followed by the US with 471,228 applications.
Last, but not least, China led in number of initial public offerings with 266 IPOs and the US was second at 203. The best performer among the top 20 IPOs was China National Nuclear Power, up 194.4 % from its June 10th offering.
Blog by Savio Chan 