Besides remember when they thought Japan would buy the US in the 80's?? ha!
What has China's growth got to do with my post? My post talked about the geo-political posturing.
Japan has over $600 billion in our public debt; out of every tax dollar collected from you, a nice bit of it goes to Tokyo. In fact, it is now enough that Japan can now pay about 30% of its own interest due on its $4 trillion or so of public debt just from the money it collects from the U.S. Treasury.
Neat, hunh? Our huge budget and trade deficits with Japan mean that you not only get to work for the American government until May each year, but that at least a few weeks are spent working for Japan's government too! (Don't worry, with the rate China has been accumulating dollars, you'll get to put in more days for them, too.)
Japan's "failure" was more of a matter perception than reality; Japan did succeed in buying the U.S., or at least a good part of it. Sure, they made some famously bad deals like Rockefeller Center and Pebble Beach. But they were buying here because there so much money chasing so little land in Tokyo that even the big prices we charged were small change. When they lost on those particular investments, it didn't certainly throw them in the poorhouse. Their own stock bubble and asset bubble did slow them down for a decade, but now things are looking better.
Let me vent a bit. We have spent the last many years negotiating "trade agreements" that are breaking us. Literally. We already work for other governments just to pay the interest on that debt, and that debt is growing madly. (I am conflating our trade and budget deficits a bit, but they go hand-in-hand since we are the world's reserve currency, something we have been playing off to fund these twin deficits.)
We have to stop this stupidity. "Free" trade is anything but: It is costing us all enormously, and it is growing worse each year. We have gone from the days when we thought a $100 billion per year was bad to today, where $600 billion per year is regarded as naught.
I have seen the argument that because it is only a tiny fraction of our GDP, it doesn't matter. Remember deficits accumulate into debt , which you continue to pay interest on until you retire some of it. I have also seen the argument that, heck, they're only dollars. Well, yes, with that attitude, we might eventually destroy their value, but that is even more unpleasant situation than our indebtedness. Ask Germany about inflating the currency into the stratosphere.
We all have to collectively work to pay the interest on that debt, and while some of the free traders certainly don't mind working for Japan or China for a few weeks each year, a lot of us probably do.