China is a threat to the United States economically.

The economy of the People's Republic of China is the second largest in the world after the US with a GDP of $10.21 trillion (2006) when measured on a purchasing power parity (PPP) basis.[citation needed] It is the fourth largest in the world after the US, Japan and Germany, with a nominal GDP of US$2.68 trillion (2006) when measured in exchange-rate terms. China has been the fastest growing major nation for the past quarter of a century with an average annual GDP growth rate above 10%. China's per capita income has grown at an average annual rate of more than 8% over the last three decades drastically reducing poverty, but this rapid growth has been accompanied by rising income inequalities. The country's per capita income is classified as low by world standards, at about $2,000 (nominal, 107th of 179 countries/economies), and $7,800 (PPP, 82nd of 179 countries/economies) in 2006, according to the IMF. Despite China's size, the abundance of its resources, and having about 20 percent of the world's population living within its borders, its role in the world economy traditionally has been relatively small. Since the late 1970s, however, the Chinese government has reformed the economy from a Soviet-type centrally planned economy that was largely closed to international trade to a more market-oriented economy that has a rapidly growing private sector and is a major player in the global economy. Since being introduced, these reforms have helped lift millions of its citizens out of poverty, bringing the poverty rate down from 53% in 1981 to 8% in 2001. This economic system has been called "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" and can be considered as a type of mixed economy. Only about a third of the economy is now directly state-controlled. As of 2005, 70% of China's GDP was in the private sector. The smaller public sector was dominated by about 200 large state enterprises concentrated mostly in utilities, heavy industries, and energy resources. Since the late 1970s and early 1980s, the economic reforms initially began with the shift of farming work to a system of household responsibility to start the phase out of collectivized agriculture, and later expanded to include the gradual liberalization of prices; fiscal decentralization; increased autonomy for state enterprises that increased the authority of local government officials and plant managers in industry thereby permitting a wide variety of private enterprise in services and light manufacturing; the foundation of a diversified banking system; the development of stock markets; the rapid growth of the non-state sector, and the opening of the economy to increased foreign trade and foreign investment. China has generally implemented reforms in a gradualist fashion, including the sale of equity in China's largest state banks to foreign investors and refinements in foreign exchange and bond markets in mid-2000s. As its role in world trade has steadily grown, its importance to the international economy has also increased apace. China's foreign trade has grown faster than its GDP for the past 25 years. The government's decision to permit China to be used by multinational corporations as an export platform has made the country a major competitor to other Asian export-led economies, such as South Korea, Singapore, and Malaysia. China has emphasized raising personal income and consumption and introducing new management systems to help increase productivity. The government has also focused on foreign trade as a major vehicle for economic growth. The restructuring of the economy and resulting efficiency gains have contributed to a more than tenfold increase in GDP since 1978. Some economists believe that Chinese economic growth has been in fact understated during much of the 1990s and early 2000s, failing to fully factor in the growth driven by the private sector. Nevertheless, key bottlenecks continue to constrain growth. Available energy is insufficient to run at fully-installed industrial capacity, the transport system is inadequate to move sufficient quantities of such critical items as coal, and the communications system cannot yet fully meet the needs of an economy of China's size and complexity.