This is John Batchelor asking my colleague Alan Tonneson to measure the Chinese economy and how

it's integrated into the world system. And is it the dominant rising power that it pretends to be,

presents itself to be? Alan has a caveat. It has about rare earths, but otherwise a surprising answer.

Here's Alan Tonneson on the significance of the Chinese rising economy to dominate the world.

More of this later.

It's clear to me that this influence has been vastly overestimated.

And in fact, if the Chinese hadn't retained this near stranglehold on the rare earth's minerals and the magnets that these substances are manufactured into, which are critical to so many electronics products, including

the defense electronics, if it wasn't for this rarer stranglehold, I really don't think the

Chinese would have a great deal of influence, whatever, certainly considering the size

of their economy, which of course has grown tremendously,

and certainly in terms of what had been until fairly recently rising levels of prosperity for the Chinese people.

But in terms of China's global influence, a surprisingly little amount of progress.