China is in the news these days for buying up Unocal, Maytag and IBM PC. If you check out the latest CIA world factbook you can see that China’s purchasing power is more than half of US with the second largest economy. If you project out the growth rates (9.1% and 4.4%) you can see China catching up to the US in 2015 when we both have $19 trillion economies (maybe $23 trillion adding in inflation).

Year China($B) US($B)
2004 7262  11750
2005 7923  12267
2006 8644  12807
2007 9430  13370
2008 10289 13959
2009 11225 14573
2010 12246 15214
2011 13361 15883
2012 14577 16582
2013 15903 17312
2014 17350 18074
2015 18929 18869

China will continue to grow its economy faster than US because its per capita income is still quite low ($5600 vs $40000 in 2004 est) and will still be less than 1/3 of US per capita income in 2015.

My favorite implication is for space policy. A China committed to space nostalgia (e.g., Moon landings) might get the US to devote thought to rationalizing commercial space policy. Mike Griffin started in this direction.