Indeed, our exposure to the Chinese is frightening. The trouble is that we don't see politicians (who sell our future via debt to the Chinese) telling us that China needs no fancy new generation intercontinental missiles to completely wipe out the US as we know it. They need no space-based star wars programme. In fact, all that they need they have already got.

They could wipe us out, in terms of the US that we are so proud of, in a week simply by leaking the idea to a few key international officials that they are thinking of calling in the US debt. The dollar will go to hell in a hand-basket in short order, and with it our priveledged position on top of the pile. That wipe out would render us incapable of even sabre rattling, let alone waging more war.

Of course this would hurt that part of the Chinese investment also, but not wipe it out. Is this too high a price to pay to become the world's (only) new Superpower?? Maybe. Maybe not. But I bet that neither you nor I have the faintest idea of how the Chinese top echelon evaluates these options - but certainly not based on our own spoiled cultural norms.