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$11 trillion this year.
$22 trillion 20 years from now.
$15 trillion as an average, times 20 years.
equals $300 trillion.
To feed, cloth, house, and generally supply 300 million people.
All surplus available for investment, research, acquistion of new means.

$1.5 trillion this year.
$6 trillion 20 years from now.
$3 trillion as an average, times 20 years.
equals $60 trillion.
To feed, cloth, house, and generally supply 1200 million people.
Any surplus available for investment, research, acquitions of new means.

Five times the raw wealth. A quarter the population to supply. They aren't going to even get close to matching what we can discover, invent, design, test, build, and deploy.

Every reason to pay attention to what they do. Japan has only a fifteenth of our GNP when they went batty and suicidal and attacked us. When they got battlecruisers and aircraft carriers, the war department was right to pay attention. But they didn't get close to our industry, and when they went for it we annihilated them. China is not much different, at present and a generation into the future. That is why I said worrying about their economy catching us is smoking crack - but there is every reason to pay attention to their military modernization efforts. They aren't in our weight class and they aren't going to be in our weight class, for decades. But idiots sometimes start things anyway.

I agree with everything in your last paragraph, which is what ultimately animates my concern- Subject to the stipulation that in those halcyon days of From Here To Eternity no one had the bomb, lasers, or any conception of star wars, any one of which which would have given us an entirely different and graver shock at Pearl Harbor from which our industrial base could not have saved us.

Which brings us to your second paragraph, can you absolutely guarantee that china will not invent and deploy some weapons system, possibly space based, which changes the entire equation? You are right, for some time to come we will out invent them, but will we enjoy a monopoly? The NY Times article describes the extraordinary strides they are making in R and D. I am old enough to remember how shocked we were that a backward Soviet Union could first surprise us with the atomic bomb and then with Sputnik. We had guarantees then too but our strategic advantage, far clearer than we now enjoy over China, was neutralized twice in one decade and we were utterly blindsided.

As to your first paragraph, I simply repeat my admonition not to assume straight line projections. I have cited in my quotes of the Times article, to be intellectually honest, some of the factors that could bring down the Chinese economy. But I think we both must admit that there are forces which could bring our own down, the Chinese extraordinary growth in manufacturing itself being one of them, which could distort our straight line projections.

I really do not think, having read your last paragraph, that we are out of sync. I would add that we must consider the geo political muscle of a nation which will probably be the world's foremost trader soon enough. At that point, assuming some straight line projections, they will be the world's second economy. They have a government which defies definition and is therefore highly unpredictable and could launch a star wars Pearl Harbor if some nerve we do not understand is touched. Meanwhile, we can count on them building alliances against us to suck up much of the world's natural resources and shape markets which in turn will affect our strategic position. I ask you only to consider their moves on oil and the mischief they can make with Venezuela. I just had a builder here in Germany tell me that the price of plywood has gone up 30% because of the demand in China.

These are real concerns for Presidents and economists beyond the war gaming which engages the Pentagon.