There's a lot of talk about how China will soon overtake the U.S. as the world's top economy. But if they do, it may be misleading.
Texas economist Dr. Ray Perryman says in recent decades the Chinese economy had been growing at a ten percent rate and that's slowed to six percent.
"If they're growing at six percent and we're growing at two and half or three percent at some point just the math would dictate they'd become larger, in one sense."
But Dr. Perryman wonders, can a totalitarian Communist regime really lead the world?
"The U.S. is the economy the world looks to as the benchmark and baseline for currency, for risk-free investments and that sort of thing; for political stability. I don't think that's going to change any time soon."
Freedom and Capitalism go together like chocolate and peanut butter, but China is trying to show you can have one without the other. Dr. Perryman is skeptical.
"Democracy and Capitalism sort of grew up together in some ways and it's very difficult to separate the two. But what they're trying to do right now is sort of have it both ways; continue to be an authoritarian regime yet have a lot of market forces out there working on the economic side; that's a challenge."
Dr. Perryman says China may have overspent itself on defense.