The Dog Wags the Tail

This Bloomberg article explains why the US is still the dog.

This report on the Hong Kong stock market is only one small reason why China is still part of the tail.

Update: It is interesting to see how much was lost from the equity markets of various countries in January 2008--based upon rumours of a US recession.

....the world's emerging equity markets were devastated in January, posting an average loss of 12.44 percent.
Turkey was hit hardest during the month, losing 22.70 percent, followed by China, down 21.40 percent. Russia plunged 16.12 percent and India was down 16.00 percent.___Source

H/T StaticNoise

Estimates of how long it would take China to overtake the US as world economic hegemon vary between 20 and 50 years. If the next US president decides to hamstring the US economy with unscientific, emotion-based CO2 hysteria, China will have a much easier time catching up.

As I have stated before, China's many dangerous instabilities make long-term predictions difficult. If I were to choose one scenario out of many as most probable, I would see a "warlord" style breakup of the current Imperial China, into at least 3 separate, warring geographic factions.