China certainly influences our economy and I loathe the ever increasing importation of Chinese crap, but you need to gather a little perspective here. Steve Forbes was just talking about this yesterday.
Foreign investments in the USA are not a bad thing. Remember back when Japan was buying up properties in the US back in the 80's when the real estate market was booming? Everybody then thought it would be the end of the USA. The reality is they lost their collective arses when the market pulled back and wound up selling most of what they bought at huge losses. Besides, if they buy a building in Manhattan, what are they going to do, dismantle it and move it to Bejing?
Another thing to consider is the relative size of the two economies. Just the growth in our economy last year was larger than the entire Chineese economy as a whole.
I'm not saying it isn't a storm to watch, particularly with their ever-increasing military build up, but when you really look at the scale of things on both sides it puts it into perspective.
Take the bubble-inflated real estate out of the equation...and I think that economic gap drastically shrinks.
One example...Chinas's steel industry is now four times the size of the U.S.
They make most of our circuit boards.
They make all of the raw material of our super-magnets. Critical for aerospace.
China's leaders have cunningly focussed their recent economic growth into military potential sectors.