I don’t want China to be the world’s most dominant economic superpower. I am an American, and so I want the United States to be the world’s most dominant economic superpower. Unfortunately, the facts that I am about to share with you in this article cannot be denied. We consume far more than we produce, and we go into colossal amounts of debt in order to make that possible. Somehow we have convinced ourselves that this makes us an economic superpower. Meanwhile, the Chinese produce far more than they consume, and as a result they have far more money coming in than they do going out. This allows them to loan vast amounts of money to nations all over the planet, and that gives them tremendous economic leverage.
Despite everything that has happened this year, China has run a trade surplus of more than a trillion dollars for the first time ever in 2025…
China’s trade surplus roared above $1 trillion in November for the first time ever, despite the ongoing global trade war that has resulted in a steep drop in exports to the U.S.
In the first 11 months this year, China’s overall exports grew 5.4% compared to the same period in 2024 while imports fell 0.6%, taking its trade surplus to $1.076 trillion this year as of November, up 21.6% year on year.
This is what economic dominance looks like.
If you want to have a great economy, you have got to be great at making stuff.
And China is better at making stuff than anyone else.
China sells far more stuff to the rest of the world than it buys from the rest of the world, and that means that it has far more money coming in than it does going out.
This enables China to lend out vast amounts of cash. In fact, at this point the rest of the world owes China about 5 trillion dollars.
It is often said that the borrower is the servant of the lender, and that is certainly true in this case.
The primary reason why China sells so much stuff to the rest of the world is because they are able to make things very inexpensively…
“Put simply, China’s price competitiveness is extremely strong,” said Xu Tianchen, a senior economist for the Economist Intelligence Unit in Beijing. “The main reason behind the continued growth of China’s exports … is not … because the overall size of global trade has expanded, but because China is claiming a larger share of the existing trade landscape.”
For a long time, cheap human labor was China’s main competitive edge.
But now Chinese factories are replacing human workers with ultra-efficient robots.
In fact, today there are more robots working in China than the rest of the world combined.
Just think about that for a moment.
That is crazy.
And the gap between China and the western world just continues to grow.
If you can believe it, Chinese factories added almost 10 times as many robots last year as U.S. factories did…
China is the world’s most dominant power in automating its manufacturing — installing nearly 10 times as many robots in its factories as the United States, according to new data.
Last year, more than half a million industrial robots were put to work in global factories — with 54% of them in China alone.
According to the International Federation of Robotics, China, which is home to nearly a third of all global manufacturing capacity, installed 295,000 industrial robots, the highest annual total on record.
We are getting absolutely monkey-hammered by the Chinese.
Shockingly, the total number of robots that U.S. factories added last year was actually lower than the total number for the year before…
In the US, meanwhile, companies put to work just 34,200 robots last year, according to the World Robotics 2025 Report.
The 34,200 figure is 9% lower than the previous year, the report found.
Of course the Chinese are not just using more robots than anyone else.
They are also producing more robots than the rest of the planet combined…
The move comes as Beijing accelerates its broader industrial strategy to lead in advanced manufacturing, a key pillar of the “Made in China 2025” initiative. As bne IntelliNews reported, China now produces more industrial robots than the rest of the world combined, with domestic players rapidly gaining ground in both hardware and AI-driven control systems.
China is moving beyond being just the largest market for robots — it is becoming the core of global robot production. Chinese firms accounted for over 60% of global robot output in 2024, driven by subsidies, procurement programmes, and access to vast domestic datasets for training machine learning models.
Robots do not call in sick.
Robots do not need to take breaks.
Robots never complain.
Robots do not need health plans.
Robots don’t play around on the Internet when they should be working.
Robots do not need to take vacations.
Robots can work 24 hours a day.
And many of the robots that the Chinese are now producing can actually recharge their own batteries.
How can human workers possibly compete?
The Chinese can now make things at about a third of the cost that we can, and that gap is only going to get wider.
When a group of top western executives recently visited China, they were “humbled” and “terrified” by what they witnessed…
Western automotive and green energy executives who visit China are returning humbled — and even terrified.
As The Telegraph reports, the executives are warning that the country’s heavily automated manufacturing industry could quickly leave Western nations behind, especially when it comes to electric vehicles.
“We are in a global competition with China, and it’s not just EVs,” Ford CEO Jim Farley told The Verge last month. “And if we lose this, we do not have a future at Ford.”
Many are hoping that winning the AI race will halt the decline of western economies.
But that is far from certain.
Today, approximately 50 percent of the world’s AI researchers are in China.
We have some really good AI researchers too, but without a doubt it is going to be a very competitive race.
In fact, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang created quite a firestorm of controversy when he recently stated that he believes that “China is going to win the AI race”…
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says Washington has lost its edge in artificial intelligence and warns that China will win the AI race. He cited the West’s cynicism, export controls, and favorable energy circumstances in China as the reason, claiming it is much easier for companies to access energy in the country.
The chief of the most valuable company in the world by market cap has long been saying that the U.S. ban on chip exports is a failure, and that the spread of its advanced semiconductors is vital for it to retain its competitive advantage globally. However, the ongoing trade war between the two powers has resulted in export bans of Blackwell chips from the White House on the one hand, and the CCP banning foreign AI chips from state-funded data centers on the other. Because of this, Nvidia’s market share in China has since dropped to basically zero, which probably led to Huang’s statement to the Financial Times.
“China is going to win the AI race,” Jensen commented. He also added that “we need more optimism,” saying that the West’s cynicism is holding it back.
Winning the AI race is going to require vast amounts of energy, and this is one of the reasons why China may have an edge.
Most Americans don’t even realize that China now produces approximately two and a half times as much energy as the United States does…
Meanwhile, China has dramatically expanded its energy output. The country now produces 2.5 times more power than the U.S., despite surpassing America only 15 years ago, Lord said.
“America can’t out-AI China if China out-powers us, so the U.S. must prioritize developing reliable power,” he said.
The Chinese are feverishly constructing more nuclear power facilities, and they are way ahead of us when it comes to clean nuclear energy research.
The bottom line is that we are in enormous trouble.
We need to stop watching so much Netflix and start getting serious about competing with China.
In 2026, I expect our trade war with China to continue to heat up.
And history has shown us that trade wars have a way of evolving into shooting wars.
Let us hope that a military conflict with China can be avoided for as long as possible, because at this stage I don’t think that such a conflict would go well for us.
Because the Chinese have been rapidly modernizing their military as well.
In just about every area, the Chinese are either catching up with us or have already surpassed us.
Sadly, most Americans are so addicted to entertainment that they don’t even realize that this is happening.
Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.
About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing. You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter. Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites. These are such troubled times, and people need hope. John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.