Does China pose a challenge to the US empire? Infographics: State of Power 2025

China has some significant economic strengths.

Infographic: GDP per capita growth

Source: Michael Roberts, 2024. https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/picture10-1.png

It has become the world’s manufacturing super-power.

infographic: World shares of gross production

Source: Richard Baldwin based on OECD data, 2024. https://cepr.org/sites/default/files/styles/flexible_wysiwyg/public/2024-01/baldwin17janfig2_0.png?itok=zGASago_

And has financial companies now that are bigger than those in the US.

Infographic: Location of global companies with $1.5 trillion in assets or above

Source: TNI based on Fortune Global 500, 2024.

China is also making itself less dependent on exports and developing its internal market.

Exports as % of total production, US and China (1995-2020)

Source: Richard Baldwin based on OECD data, 2023. https://shorturl.at/Crbae

 China is investing significantly in key new emerging economic sectors.

Infographic: Share of patents in quantum computing by country (2000-2023)

Source: European Patent Office Data Desk, 2024. https://www.epo.org/en/about-us/observatory-patents-and-technology/data-desk

Infographic: Investment (private and public) in renewables

ource: TNI based on IEA World Energy Investment, 2024. https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/data-product/world-energy-investment-2024-datafile

But it still has some way to go to pose a serious political, economic or military challenge to the US

Infographic: Military expenditure by top five largest spenders 1993-2022

Source: TNI based on SIPRI, 2024. https://milex.sipri.org/sipri

Its corporations in most sectors are still trailing the US when it comes to profits.

China only leads the US in national corporate profit-share in 3 out of 25 leading sectors

Source: S. K. Starrs' calculations from Forbes Global 2000, 2024 (with research assistance from Quoc Linh Pham & Yizhou Miao)

US also continues to lead the world in terms of Big Tech.

Infographic: Top 300 tech firms

Source: TNI based on Companies Market Cap, November 2024. https://companiesmarketcap.com

The research for these infographics was done by Benjamin Wray with the support of Nick Buxton. Sean  Kenji Starrs also provided graphics based on his own calculations. The designs were done by Evan Clayburg.

These infographics are part of the State of Power 2025 report: Geopolitics of Capitalism. You can access the full report here.