On the other hand, China's demand has underwritten the growth in the world economy; its import growth has virtually matched its export growth. It's in nobody's interests for it to relapse, and the scale of its achievement masks fundamental, deep-set problems that mean it is unlikely in the foreseeable future to be a genuine across-the-board economic and military challenger to the US.
But that is not the consensus view in Washington. The relationship between the world's two continental economies is edgy and becoming edgier. Both sides are highly nationalistic. Despite their interdependence -- it is China that has been the principal financier of the US's trade deficit -- the tinder is there for a full-blown trade war. If there is this degree of tension with US full employment, it will be explosive in the next economic downturn, with consequences that will affect the entire world.
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