(november 2012) China is a colony of the USA. When talking about China-USA relations, most commentators begin by pointing out that the USA owes China a trillion dollars (not quite, but let's keep it simple). While this is technically true (China has been purchasing the debt of the USA year after year), it would help to restate it as "The USA funds China's GDP". The USA has been the main contributor to China's growth after the end of the Cold War just like it was the main contributor to Western Europe's growth and to Japan's growth after World War II. In all three cases (Western Europe, Japan, China), growth would have been much slower if the USA had not absorbed a sizeable percentage of the exports of those countries. The products in question were mostly low-tech products that the USA was happy to import instead of producing.
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Therefore, when one looks at the money that the USA owes China, one is really looking at the "favor" that the USA is doing China. That money is the very money that keeps the Chinese economy going. The USA does this for multiple reasons (last but not least, to fund its own growth), but that's another story. So far, China has been a beneficiary of the generosity of the USA, not the other way around. Whether China's growth continues or not depends in part on its own decisions (check how Western Europe self-destroyed with its reckless policies), but also on what the USA decides to do with China. The vice versa is not true. If the economy of the USA collapses, China's economy will suffer tremendously. If the Chinese economy collapses, the only people who will notice in the USA are the ones who invested in Chinese business and in the Chinese stock market (it will certainly take a toll on the Dow Jones index).
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