Beyond GDP: Measuring U.S. and Chinese National Power, 1820–2076

Debates about the balance of power between the United States and China often turn on a single number, gross domestic product, and the answer depends on which GDP is used: at market exchange rates the U.S. economy is about 58 percent larger, while at purchasing-power parity China’s is about 34 percent larger. This paper argues that national power is better understood as a system of interdependent capabilities and measures it on that basis. It proposes an eight-element framework, covering economy, manufacturing, technology, energy, finance, military, alliances and human capital, with demography, infrastructure and fiscal space treated as cross-cutting conditions. Using 31 indicators drawn from primary sources for 2024–2026 and a transparent metric (China’s share of the combined U.S.–China value, where 0.5 marks parity), the paper finds that the two countries have strongly asymmetric profiles. China leads clearly in manufacturing (0.84) and energy (0.75); the United States leads strongly in finance (0.09), alliances (0.30) and military capability (0.32), more moderately in human capital (0.36) and the economy taken as a whole (0.36), and narrowly in technology (0.45). The equal-weight composite is 0.43, and across sixteen alternative specifications it stays between 0.38 and 0.48. China is never placed ahead of the United States, yet no element is close to a stable equilibrium. Long-run evidence from the Maddison Project and the Correlates of War capability index (1820–2022), together with United Nations, OECD and private projections to 2076, shows that the present balance is the product of a historic reversal and that its next phase will be shaped by demography and by the conversion of physical capacity into productivity rather than by aggregate size alone. Files: the paper (PDF); the indicator data for Table 2 and Appendix A (CSV, 31 indicators with values, shares, element scores, sources and notes); and a README describing the columns. Data current to 18 October 2026.